


and i’ll love the world, like i should, for all of the time that i never could

by a_simple_space_nerd



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CLARKE GETS TATTOOS, Canon Bisexual Character, Clarke gets some closure: a truly wild concept, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I literally wrote this bc I was sad that the 100 doesn't know how to keep friendships alive lmao, Not Canon Compliant, also a horse?? idk, also some time to heal!!! wow I'm really stretching it here folks, author continues to write stories where Clarke travels the world: the ongoing saga, madi isn't in this story but other people are!!, no way did every person on earth die in praimfaya, that was literally the whole point of season 1 lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 20:56:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12261945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_simple_space_nerd/pseuds/a_simple_space_nerd
Summary: And it’s now, of all times, that she lets herself finally, finally think: they’re up in space and I’m down on earth and even if I can survive this they’ll be up there for five years at minimum. I’m alone here.It’s not as awful as she’d expected the revelation to be. Maybe it’s because she’s in the middle of the apocalypse but suddenly she doesn’t feel the need to curl into a ball and cry for days. Maybe it’s also the fact that she isn’t dead.She’s still struggling not to get blown away, even sheltered as she is the ruins of some bank or something like it, the building creaking and groaning as the roaring typhoon thrashes its foundations. There’s dirt and grit flying everywhere, the dust so thick Clarke has to squint. The storm is taller than the highest skyscraper in the ruins, reaching down to the ground and back up to the sky for more fuel, thunder and lightning and everything in between all at once.In this moment there is just Clarke and the storm and the end of the world and her uncertain future.





	and i’ll love the world, like i should, for all of the time that i never could

**Author's Note:**

> WOW this has been sitting on my computer for months,, i haven't seen season 4, so please forgive the many inaccuracies, but i know enough to wonder what may have happened if things went differently and old fears were never forgotten. so here's the AU no one asked for: what if Clarke wasn't the only one left on earth? if the first nuclear war didn't kill everyone on earth, why would the second? also, here, let's pretend that an out-of-rocket lever isn't necessary, because really, jroth, it's getting excessive.

 “Are you forgetting that last time you were saving us, I was saving you?”

He said it in a moment of anger, which was—to be expected, probably. It hurt anyways. She didn’t stop thinking about it, not even after she’d turned her back on the man who was once the only one who stood by her side, John Murphy of all people, and tried very hard not to run away.

She wondered who she’d become, when she’d become this—this monster.

 

Even after they had figured out a plan of sorts, even after everything, she heard his voice, in her head, shouting at her. She never figured John Murphy would become her conscience, never thought his words would hurt her more than anything anyone else had said, and over the past few months, well, they’d said a lot, so that was saying something.

It hurt more than Octavia’s _well that’s not enough_ and Raven’s _poison_ and _got Lexa killed too_ and Bellamy’s _you left me_ and _when you’re in change people die_ and Jasper’s _you really are the angel of death_ and her mother’s _their blood is on your hands_.

It hurt so much because this time, this time—this wasn’t anyone’s doing but her own. It had nothing to do with the mountain men, or Trikru, or Lexa, or anyone else she could share the blame with just to ease the blackening of her heart. This time it was her fault only, and it was worse because it was true and it was worse because it was John Murphy.

She thought about his words even while listening to Bellamy shout things just as vicious, just as wounded, and she heard his condemnation when Bellamy held her hand and promised shiny things like forgiveness and life for both of them.

She thought about them when she was walking away. When the rocket launched. When she saw two figures in suits head towards the forest, hand-in-hand.

 

She told herself that this time she wouldn’t drag anyone down with her. (She’d say that she’d save herself but it sounded a bit too hopeful for the Clarke of today.)

* * *

 

Her hair grows faster, weirdly. It’s a strange thing to happen and it’s an even stranger thing to notice, but around a week after her people blasted into space for the foreseeable future, she notices that it’s grown a good three inches since she ventured into the forest.

She wears it in a braid now. It’s almost like when she first landed on the planet except it isn’t and everything’s changed.

She wears normal clothes, doesn’t bother with a suit or with furs or leathers. She’s not sure when the wave will officially hit, because really—statistics can only do so much. She hunts because she knows how to do that, from after the mountain, and she sleeps under trees and near rivers. She bathes this time too, because if she’s got the extra hair she might as well let it look nice. Nobody wants to die smelling like dirt and sadness.

 

She goes to Nilah’s place and stays there for a few days, then stocks up on whatever hasn’t been raided and heads north. She bumps into families, travelling on the well-worn roads, and they don’t recognise her face. Nobody is sure what they’re running from, anymore.

It’s been two-and-a-half weeks and she finds a bunker. It’s got a latch and when she manages to open it there’s another latch further down the ladder: it’s airtight. She doesn’t open this one, she rushes back up the ladder and heads back the way she came, running on sore feet and not stopping to let herself think.

She finds them after only a day of looking. They aren’t trying very hard to hide, camped out in some twisted hunk of ark, the metal providing shelter from the quickly-changing weather. They’re both sitting underneath the roof when she approaches, and she almost turns and runs away again but— no. She’s run away from him too often.

She doesn’t bother with niceties. “I found a bunker,” she says. “It’s airtight and three days’ walk from here if you hurry.” Emori stares at her. Murphy looks at Emori and then back at her.

“Why are you telling us?” He asks, and there’s a wariness in his tone that picks at a scab on Clarke’s heart.

She tries for a smile and gives up halfway there. She pulls her stolen jacket tighter around her shoulders. “You’re still—” she falters. You’re still—what? Friends, family, my people? She doesn’t think either of them would appreciate being associated with her in any way. A frigid breeze stings her cheek and she suppresses a shiver. She tries again: “I thought you might want someplace to stay.” She looks pointedly at their hazmat suits, which are no doubt running low on breathable air.

Emori looks at John and then back to her, grins. Clarke takes that as a good sign.

 

They don’t talk much on the way over. Clarke is somewhat fidgety, more so than either of her companions, but she’s more relaxed than she’s been in weeks. No one has time to come after Wanheda anymore. The shadows are hiding nothing but her ghosts. John and Emori talk in soft tones but don’t stop in her ear-range, Emori’s accent more pronounced when she’s tired. Clarke wonders why they don’t speak in Trigadesleng, if either of them actually does.

She doesn’t ask. She tries to avoid speaking to them except when necessary: _here’s a good place to stop, watch out for that bush it’s poisonous, careful stepping over the log_.  Emori tells stories over the fire on the last night, and Murphy’s face goes all soft and gentle and Clarke wants to tear out her hair.

(She doesn’t think about Bellamy, or Raven, or Monty, or her mother, or Kane, or Harper, or— no. She doesn’t think about them.)

 

They reach the bunker just as the sky has turned from a sick orange to a rusty, murky red. Birds have stopped flying, and the clouds look wispy and weak. Clarke shows them the bunker door and leads them down inside, and grins when the final latch has an airlock within it. Emori and Murphy pull off their helmets with soft gasps before all three turn to observe their surroundings.

It’s a house, of sorts. Someone, somewhere, had once clearly planned for the worst. It’s not excessively lavish but it’s certainly better than anything on the ark, and Clarke can see hallways leading to what she presumes to be bedrooms and bathrooms, and the ladder they climbed down leads into a combined living/dining/kitchen area.

Emori whistles lowly through her teeth and smiles at Clarke. “Thanks,” she says.

Clarke smiles back, grabs Emori’s forearm on impulse, and steps back towards the ladder.

Murphy turns towards her, a strange look on his face. “Really, Clarke,” he says, “thank you.”

Clarke’s smile twists and slips away as she tries to quell the desire to run away as fast as she can. “Don’t thank me,” she mutters. Right before she opens the first latch (first latch of three before she’ll reach the surface,) she pauses and looks at Emori, who’s stepping further into the bunker and curiously observing her surroundings, and Murphy, watching her go with that strange, unreadable look upon his face.

 _You deserve it,_ she thinks. _I’m so sorry,_ she thinks. _After everything I’ve done to you don’t thank me,_ she thinks, but says nothing and rushes up the ladder without a word.

* * *

 

The wave comes as a wall of smoke and acid and flames. She’s further away from the forests now, in the ruins of some—a city, maybe? She’s got her back pressed to the wall and her knees to her chest, but she can see what’s coming thanks to the broken shards of window before her. She didn’t think there were many people left, but there’s more screaming than she expected. She doesn’t close her eyes, not once, even as the tall, smoky pillars of flashing green-grey-orange rolls further into the city, the wind picking up, voices wailing and echoing in the sudden silence.

It hits with a force, pushes her roughly forwards before she presses back against the wall with renewed vigour. The screaming has stopped, and now it’s just Clarke and the storm and the end of the world.

And it’s now, of all times, that she lets herself finally, finally think: _they’re up in space and I’m down on earth and even if I can survive this they’ll be up there for five years at minimum. I’m alone here_.

It’s not as awful as she’d expected the revelation to be. Maybe it’s because she’s in the middle of the apocalypse but suddenly she doesn’t feel the need to curl into a ball and cry for days. Maybe it’s also the fact that she isn’t dead.

She’s still struggling not to get blown away, even sheltered as she is the ruins of some bank or something like it, the building creaking and groaning as the roaring typhoon thrashes its foundations. There’s dirt and grit flying everywhere, the dust so thick Clarke has to squint. The storm is taller than the highest skyscraper in the ruins, reaching down to the ground and back up to the sky for more fuel, thunder and lightning and everything in between all at once.

In this moment there is just Clarke and the storm and the end of the world.

 

It takes the whole day for the worst of the storm to pass, and another two for the last gales to sweep through. By the end of it Clarke still hadn’t left her shelter but she’d emerged from behind the column and she watches the tornados and slow-moving fog as it passes through the city.

 

She steps out into a layer of shining dust and stands as still as stone, surrounded by the towering skyscrapers and the whistling wind and not a soul in sight.

She heads back because she needs to know if they’re alive. If they made it. Is Octavia still managing to control the hordes, are Emori and Murphy still alive? She survived. Now she has to figure out what to do with that information.

(She doesn’t wonder if the ark could see the radiation scorching the globe, doesn’t wonder if they think she’s dead, doesn’t wonder if they cried—no. She doesn’t.)

 

A little over a week after the storm passed, she’s two things: very hungry, and standing right above the bunker door that houses Emori and Murphy, hopefully still alive.

She’s not sure why she’s back, except she is. She’d never say it to his face for fear of offending him, but he is her people. She called him her friend, once, a lifetime ago. She’s also starving, because she’d seen barely any animals and she didn’t want to risk eating radiated raspberry or rabbit until she’d checked on the few people she cares about, regardless that they don’t feel the same.

She takes a breath and doesn’t even consider that she’s probably drinking in poison. She lifts the latch and heads down the ladder, hands slipping a bit on the smooth metal.

 

“Clarke?” Says Emori, surprise colouring her tone, and Clarke blinks to see her hoisting a dagger of her head, slowly being lowered. “Clarke!”

Emori grins and Clarke huffs out in surprise, half-smile on her lips. “You’re alive!”

Clarke hops down the last step of the ladder. “So are you! The bunker works!”

John steps into view, smiling slightly, which is a surprise. “It works,” he agrees, “or we’re just taking a while to die.” He shrugs and slips a hand around Emori’s waist, and Clarke’s throat momentarily clogs up at the familiar closeness the couple before her share. She can’t believe she almost ruined them. She shakes her head to rattle the thoughts away before they can drag her down.

“How are you?” She asks, moving on quickly. “Did you guys find food, equipment?”

Emori laughs, leaning against one of the white couches, and Clarke takes a moment to stare at her casual attire; the unbuttoned plaid shirt over a white tank top and tight blue jeans are a sight so unexpected that Clarke takes a moment to let the sight sink in, seeing Murphy wearing a black t-shirt and dark jeans, denim jacket slipped snuggly over his shoulders.

“The couple who got this place made,” Emori waves a hand around the bunker with a wry smile, “really planned for the worst, thankfully. We’ve got food to last decades, honestly.” She breaks into a smile and glances at Murphy. “There’s this thing—oh my god, Clarke, it’s so good—have you ever tried peaches?”

Clarke furrows her brow, watching Emori bounce on her toes. “Uh.”

Emori laughs. “It’s—it’s honestly so good, but John doesn’t like it because he’s a heathen… you’d agree with me I’m sure, it’s _so_ good. Wait, let me—” She jumps up and off into the kitchen, and Clarke frantically protests but Murphy holds up a hand.

“Let her,” he drones with an eyeroll. “We have enough to feed a small army, trust me. All canned. We can sacrifice one peach. Besides, you look like you haven’t eaten anything in weeks.”

Clarke flushes slightly under his sharp gaze, tries to stop from clenching her fists or tugging on her jacket. “I’m not— sure what’s safe to eat,” she admits, and John frowns.

“Stay for dinner,” he offers, and Clarke shakes her head desperately but he sends her a sharp smile, just as faux as her own, not a smile at all. “You can tell us about the outside world. We’ve been stuck in here for, like, three weeks. I’m going crazy, Clarke, c’mon.”

Clarke’s about to make a dash for the ladder when she notices that he’s not looking at her. This must be bothering him more than she thought, the whole being cooped-up thing.

“Yeah,” she says softly, surrendering. “Yeah, okay.”

He stiffens like he expected her to say no, and then sends her a (real) smirk and disappears to tell Emori.

 

Dinner is pasta and peaches. It’s amazing, and Clarke is really _so hungry,_ but she doesn’t even have to keep herself from eating too much or too fast because she’s so scared of doing something wrong. She’s silent, listening to Emori talk about everything they’ve found in the bunker or about something they’ve discovered about life Before, humming or hmming in the appropriate places.

“So,” Murphy says dryly, his tone as bland as ever though something in it is very attentive and alert, “you’re still alive.”

Clarke sets down her glass and tries not to fidget. “Yeah,” she agrees, “seems like it.” Murphy cracks a smile, which is unexpected. Maybe the isolation is softening him.

“What about the others?” Emori’s leaning forward on her forearms, head tilted slightly, and Clarke doesn’t wilt under their combined gazes, she doesn’t, she’s led her people time and time again and faced down people with her chin held high even with guns pressed to her head, and she doesn’t _do_ wilting. (It’s just: she feels like she owes them, more than the others. She owes them something and she doesn’t know how to pay up. She doesn’t know if she can.)

“I didn’t really see anyone.” Clarke folds her arms over her chest, frowning. “There might still be some around, though. I was in a city when the wave hit—”

“City?” says Murphy, and “Wave?” says Emori.

“The radiation, it came in this giant storm, like a wave. It lasted days. The city was mostly rubble but it must have been really big, once, because there were all these skyscrapers and high-rises and stuff, so I thought it was a good place to wait the storm out.”

“Okay,” says Emori, and Murphy nods.

“Anyways. I headed here pretty much right after the worst of the storm had passed. I’m going to check on Octavia’s bunker after, and then… I’m not sure.” Clarke licks her lips. “I didn’t see anyone on the road, but I know the city wasn’t empty. I’m suspecting that the nightblood wasn’t as elite as the conclave believed, there’s no way they managed to find every person with _natbleda_ genes since Becca. So those with nightblood will be somewhere, or maybe even second or third generation _natbleda_ , and I’m not even sure that people from further south won’t have different genes to us anyways. There’s nothing to say that people from different locations haven’t somehow adapted or evolved in ways people here haven’t.” She shrugs kind of helplessly, almost smiling. “From here on, I have no idea what to expect. I’m in the dark.”

Murphy shark-grins. “Just like old times,” he says slowly, and there’s less bite than there might once have been.

“Just like old times,” Clarke agrees.

 

Emori suddenly frowns, tilts her head. “Is—is your hair longer, or is that just me?”

Clarke lets out a burst of laughter, and then she blinks in surprise. She wasn’t sure she could still laugh.

“Seriously,” Emori protests, but she’s laughing a bit too. “John, come on, it looks way longer, doesn’t it?”

He rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair, but he doesn’t seem as bored as he’s pretending.

“No, it definitely is, not just you,” Clarke smiles, “maybe it’s the radiation? I’m not sure.”

Emori leans back and onto the legs of her chair. “Are you telling me,” she says slowly, deadpan, somewhat incredulously, “that the deadly radiation I was promised is actually just hair stimulant?”

Clarke blinks at her and Emori blinks back, and then they’re laughing and Clarke has her head in her hands and she might be crying but she isn’t sure. Murphy is snorting, maybe at them, she can never tell, and Clarke thinks that the apocalypse isn’t anything like she’d expected.

 

Emori braids her hair before she goes, her fingers combing through Clarke’s curls with a surety that speaks of years of experience, and Murphy plops his feet into Clarke’s lap as they sit on the couch and Clarke tells them about outside.

The birds haven’t come back yet, and the forest is greener in some places and nothing but char in others, and she saw a flower bigger than her head the other day and did they know if bark was poisonous?

The candles in the room are glowing softly and Clarke knows she has to go soon but she feels safe here. She feels _safe_ here. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever feel safe anywhere. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever feel safe anywhere Bellamy wasn’t.

* * *

 She reaches Octavia’s bunker with her hair in a braid and a flower in her hand. She knocks on the door and keeps drumming until a crackly, static voice rings out: “Who’s there?” It’s an unfamiliar voice. Octavia must have guards keeping people out. If there are even any people to keep out.

“Clarke,” says Clarke, leaning closer, picking a couple more flowers from where she sits. “Griffin.” There’s silence, and then:

“Clarke?” Octavia sounds shocked, almost happy, almost (almost, almost) like the girl Clarke once knew. “You’re alive?”

“Yeah,” confirms Clarke. “Are you?”

Octavia huffs out a little laugh. “Yeah, yeah… we’re alive. Are you—” She hesitates. “Are you okay?”

Clarke’s breath catches and she closes her eyes, leans against the protruding bunker hatch. “Yeah,” she says, and she isn’t sure if it’s a lie or not. “Are you okay? Are all of you okay?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” says Octavia, and if Clarke tries hard she can almost picture her smile. “Holy crap, Clarke, I thought you were dead. We all did.”

Clarke opens her eyes. Tries not to hope. Notices that the sky isn’t the same shade of blue as it used to be. Brighter, somehow. Keeps her breathing steady.

“Oh my god, Clarke, everyone is going to be so glad you’re alive—we all thought you were dead for sure.”

Octavia pauses, like she knows what Clarke’s going through. “They all really miss you,” she says, softer. Leadership has changed her, smoothed her edges and hardened them. “Hell, I missed you. This leadership thing, Clarke, damn.”

Clarke chuckles drily. “Seems like you’re doing a really good job, Octavia.” Better than me, she doesn’t say.

Octavia is silent for a moment, and the silence sounds almost guilty. Remorseful. She’s probably thinking the same thing. “It’s hard work,” she says eventually, sounding uneasy.

Clarke snorts. “Well, you’re a natural,” she reassures the other girl, keeping her voice light.

There’s a bit of static for a second, like Octavia is shuffling around, and then she says, “Thanks, Clarke.” Clarke can hear her pleased smile in her words.

Clarke closes her eyes again, brings her knees to her chest and fists her hands. “You… said something about the others. Can you—is there a radio? Can you talk to them?”

Octavia’s response is instantaneous; “Yeah, we got the radio working. We can talk to them, Clarke.” She must sense Clarke’s immediate response and adds, “They’re all okay. They’re safe and they’re healthy, and… they’re all okay.”

Clarke exhales and leans her head back against the bunker hatch. Thank gods. Thank _gods_.

“I can… give them a message, if you want?” Octavia sounds a bit more uncertain again.

Clarke opens her eyes. The orange clouds are gathering again. It’s going to rain. She’ll need to find shelter. The realisation sends a pang throughout her heart. “You would do that?”

“Of course, god, Clarke… they’ve been miserable.”

Clarke looks down to see she’s crumpled up the pretty flowers in her fists, sad little balls of mushy petals underneath her fingernails and staining her palms. “Okay, um… okay. Can you… tell them I’m glad they’re okay, and that I’m okay, and I miss them, and tell them I’m sorry but I didn’t see any other way and—tell them I’m sorry. Tell them to be safe and eat enough food and get enough sleep and not worry about me because I’m really, really, fine.”

Octavia’s breath sounds kind of shaky when she says, “Got it.”

“Good.” Clarke exhales. Watches the clouds roll towards her at an alarming rate. “Thank you, Octavia.”

“No problem. I’ll tell them first thing next contact.”

“Thank you.” Clarke squeezes her eyes shut. “Octavia?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go. I’m really sorry. The rain.”

“Oh.” Octavia almost (almost, almost) sounds disappointed. “Okay, yeah. Be safe. I’m… I’m glad you’re okay, Clarke.”

Clarke smiles. Opens her eyes. “You too, Octavia, really. Be safe.”

“May we meet again,” Octavia whispers, and Clarke jumps to her feet and heads into the woods before the first drop hits the ground.

 

She huddles in a hollow tree trunk with her arms wrapped around her legs and she lets herself think, really think. Five years. Probably. Maybe Raven will figure something else out. Five _years_. When they come down, she’ll be twenty-three. Gods. Maybe they won’t even land in this area again, how would she know where to find them? Could she ever find them? What if she’s doomed to die alone and waiting? It would be more than she deserves, but… she misses them. She doesn’t want to die without seeing them again.

The acidic rain burns holes in the leaves above her and Clarke _sobs_.

 

“Monty started crying,” Octavia says as greeting.

“What?” says Clarke, and then, “Hi, Octavia.”

“When I told them,” continues Octavia, “Monty started crying.”

Clarke’s heart skips a beat.

“He said that he misses you and he understands and he’s glad you’re safe.”

Clarke wipes her face with the back of her hand.

“Raven says she’s pissed, but if you die she’s going to be even more pissed… so keep that in mind.”

Clarke lets out a watery laugh. “I’ll do my best.”

“Harper says you have to wave at the sky every night because they’re waving to you, and she wants you to be extra careful, and…” Octavia pauses, here. “And don’t be sad.”

“Miller says he misses you and he’s glad you’re not fried up,” Octavia continues, a smile in her voice, “and please don’t get stabbed or shot because he doesn’t want to go grey, and he forgives you. Your mom, down here, says she loves you and please be safe and she’s trying to understand.” Another pause. “Bellamy said… he said you’re an idiot but if you die he’s going to fly down back to earth himself to slap you back to life.” Her voice softens. “He said he misses you. He said he’s sorry too.”

Clarke buries her face in her hands and lets her shoulders shake.

* * *

Before she knows it, it’s been four months. She spears a deer with three heads (three!) and figures that it’s definitely bad for her but she’ll die anyways. Might as well be with a full stomach.

She doesn’t die.

She lives nowhere and she sleeps everywhere, under the stars and in abandoned trader’s posts and in the wreckage of long-gone cities, a backpack and the clothes on her back all she has.

She survives.

She finds people, some with melting faces and some with shaking limbs and some with extra fingers and some with bleeding eyes, but people. _People_. Some don’t even look at her and some can’t even talk, but some laugh and chatter like birds, dancing around their fires with a carelessness that only an apocalypse could give them.

She’s still alive.

She visits Emori and Murphy ( _John_ ) every three weeks, per unspoken request. She meets Octavia only twice after the first instance, because she knows people will talk, people will grow restless, the radio will break. She doesn’t want to hear Octavia say it, so she comes less, leaves first. It’s what she does best, after all… all that’s different is that this time she doesn’t stay away for too long.

She dances with the travelling grounders, twists her hips and wrists the way they do and lets her hair fly free, learning their songs like she learnt poems with Wells oh-so-long-ago.

She’s _alive_.

She learns how to fight again. This time, though, it’s not the frantic desperation of a teenager trying to stay alive just another day, save herself and her people. This time it’s real fighting, Lexa-fighting. She images, sometimes, that Lexa might be proud. (She still sees her face some days, when she hasn’t slept in a few hours too long, when she’s had too much to drink. She sees all of their faces, silent and accusing.) She’d expected the world to become crueller, harsher, after the Wave, and it is, but it’s also not. People flaunt their cultures instead of defending them, proud and unashamed of who they are. People drink instead of sitting in silence. People run free and loud instead of watching and waiting for the next pin to drop.

In some ways, the apocalypse makes Clarke feel freer than she ever has before.

For a girl who was once locked into a tiny cell in space for months on end, the apocalypse is almost _liberating_.

 

She wanders, sometimes. Further than the mountain, only just. (Never in, never through the tunnels underneath. No.) It’s an eight-day trip to the mountain so she has to be fast, but sometimes—she wonders what’s holding her back. She’s almost (almost, almost) alone on this planet. She’s got no one to protect, anymore, only her. (She’s never been very good at that, protecting herself. She’s never—she’s never really tried. Not yet.)

What’s making her turn back, every time?

She ventures further and further, but only just. She wonders what’s out there. What’s waiting. Surely—the whole world can’t just be gone, can it? She knows it isn’t. The people she sees once or twice a month, creeping through the woods or leaning out of high-rise windows, they’re still here. What else is still here? What could she see?

She avoids villages.

She paints with berries and petals, she draws with charcoal from her fire. She fills up sketchbooks and draws everyone she sees. Draws Emori, twice. (One for me, one for you.) Tells Emori and John about the people she meets, and John ( _John_ ) gives her a look like she can hear the longing, the wondering. Brings them radiated meat when John complains about canned food.

Dances with Emori around their living room, twirling to singers long-dead, laughing when Emori recognises some of the movements she’s learnt from Outside, exaggerate their actions together until John cracks and starts to laugh and then they’re all a triumphant whirl of flashing teeth and splitting smiles, long hair flying victoriously through the air as they spin around and around. Emori and John look so clean, compared to her—not in hygiene, she’s found rivers work almost as well as showers anyways,–  but with their normal, not-patchy clothes, unlike anything from the ark or after, and her with her patchwork of pilfered grounder attire and her old stuff from before.

They paint one of the living room walls, listening to music from before the world ended, (the first time,) makeshift brushes and bowls of Clarke’s homemade (or discovered) paints scattered on the floor. They paint the world like they thought it would be, before they fell from the sky, and somehow it ends up looking just like the world Clarke sees every day. Snow-capped mountains in one corner, a river trickling down their sides and into a lake into an ocean, flowery fields underneath a bright blue sky, fading into a sunrise on the other end of the wall. A forest, bright and green, with glowing moss and thick tree-trunks. Full, wispy clouds, sunlight streaming through the treetops. Bright yellow blossoms right in the front of the image.

It’s not perfect but it’s something, and it warms Clarke’s heart in a way she thought she’d never feel again.

The night they finish the mural, John makes peaches and they watch a movie called The Lion King on the TV, piled onto the same couch with limbs artfully arranged and contented weariness seeping into their muscles after a long day of painting. Clarke looks at them and thinks that she’d never have picked them to be her closest friends in the world, literally, but—here they are.

 

The part of her heart that sings _Bellamy, Bellamy, Bellamy_ never stops singing. She never tries to make it.

 

Octavia passes their messages to her on the rare occasion Clarke stops by their bunker. She always cries but she’s always smiling. Octavia tells her about life below, and Clarke listens to her and tells her to trust those in her inner circle, Indra and Roan and Luna and Gaia and someone called Rico. Sometimes there are problems; arguments or disagreements, and sometimes it almost (almost, almost,) sounds like Octavia is asking for advice. Clarke does her best but for the most part she tries to tell Octavia (without _telling_ Octavia) that Clarke is the wrong person to ask about leadership because she seemed to do everything wrong.

She doesn’t want to be a leader anymore. She comes to this realisation and instantly feels guilty but then—why does she have to feel guilty? She doesn’t _have_ to be a leader anymore! She has _no one_ to lead.

 

She still gets nightmares, but they’re different. Less blood-on-hands and heart-in-throat and gun-in-hands mountain dreams or flaming-burning dropship dreams or running-never-stopping and twitching-fingers-anxious-heart running away dreams. Less ghosts. More emptiness, vast expanses of grey, silent storms. She screams for hours and no sound comes from her throat. She runs for days and there’s never anything there. She’s just… alone.

Everything is gone. There is nothing left. She wakes up and runs her hands over the trees and stands in the wind and tells herself that they are only dreams.

She feels like they’re trying to tell her something.

 

Things change when it’s been nine months and four days (why is she still counting?) and a group of people travel through the forest where she’s staying. A real group of people, (people!) which is a shock to her system after months of silence. Most of the dancers from early After have gone. (Disappeared. Faded. She doesn’t want to know.) She hasn’t seen other grounders, in a group, so many of them, for so long.

She doesn’t bother hiding, and she shows her curiosity, and they’re not hostile. There’s around twenty of them, maybe more, of different ages and cultures and everything. She even sees three little kids, with gap-toothed smiles and wide eyes. _Kids_.

“I’m Clarke,” she introduces, in Trigedaslang, sitting around their fire cross-legged on the ground. Her name is echoed back to her from various locations, and she tilts her head. Time has made her no less wary, no less sharp, no less _her_ , but there is less need these days. She doesn’t feel like she’s in danger.

“Hello, Clarke,” says one of them, with braids piled onto her head in a tower, skin glowing bronze in the light of the flames. “We are the _Strecha_.”

“Walkers,” Clarke repeats. “Why are you here?”

The woman smiles at her, eyes crinkling. “We walk,” she says, and that’s that.

 

The Strecha are a clan of nomads, she learns that night. They come from everywhere: desert clans and forest clans and Luna’s clan and further than all of them. They’ve all survived the radiation, somehow, and they’re wandering what’s left of the planet, learning and exploring and—walking. They carry weapons and they don’t hold them like they think she’s a threat. They speak with accents she’s never heard, in languages she doesn’t know.

They tell her they’ve been to forests where the trees reach up further than the eye can see, where people live in the branches like monkeys. Places where the snow is so deep they create shoes to walk on top of them, treating ice as a tool to be treasured. Places where the flowers stretch on like oceans, grasses up to their arms and sun always shining.

They’re heading to the mountains next, the woman with the braids tells her, offering Clarke a piece of meat speared through a stick which she accepts. They’re staying here, in the woods, for a few days, and then they’re moving forward.

Clarke watches them, with their different languages and their different clothes and their easy smiles, and she wonders.

 

Her next meeting with Emori and John is the next day, and an hour after she’s arrived Emori pulls her down onto the couch and holds her hands in her own, waiting. Knowing.

John perches on the couch’s arm next to her, and Clarke blinks. “It’s this clan,” she says, and John scowls like he’s expecting a war. It’s not an unwarranted reaction, but it makes her sad to see.

“They’re travellers. They’re not staying long, and they’re peaceful, so don’t worry. They’ve seen so much of the world, been to all these places I used to draw…” she trails off, surprised at the wistfulness that’s crept into her voice.

Emori is looking at her, a mixture of sadness and fondness and an easy acceptance. “You’re going with them, aren’t you?”

“I—” Clarke suddenly wants to cry. “I don’t _know_.”

Emori’s face crumples in sympathy and she tugs Clarke closer to her, rests her head on Clarke’s shoulder, winds her arms around one of Clarkes’. She hums quietly and Clarke slumps back against the backboard of the coach.

John meets her eyes and sends her a smile. It’s a little uneven, a little sharp even now, but it feels like everything Clarke’s been striving for. “You should go,” he says quietly, sliding down onto the couch and bending his legs to fit, and Clarke lets her head fall on one of his knees. “It’s what you want, right?”

“I think so, yeah,” Clarke whispers, “Yeah. I want to go with them.”

 

“I’ll come back,” she promises, again and again. She’d spent the night with the not-grounder-not-skaikru couple, and she’s been smiling all morning. Excitement sits unfamiliar and buzzing in the pit of her stomach and the tips of her fingers.

“Of course you will,” agrees Emori. “But don’t rush back for us. We’ll be safe. You’ve made sure of that.” She pulls Clarke into a hug and squeezes, and they stay there until John snorts at them.

His smile is softer than Clarke’s ever seen it directed at anyone other than Emori. “Be safe,” he says. “Thank you. Have fun.”

Clarke grins at him and tugs him roughly into a hug of his own, her soft laughter muffled against his clothes. “No ‘may we meet again?’”

John snorts again, draws away and grips one of her shoulders. “That old saying doesn’t mean anything to us, Clarke, not anymore. We’re different. We’re on the ground. We haven’t been a part of that philosophy for years now. Screw that, screw them: we’re just us and that’s fine. We _will_ meet again.”

“Until we meet again,” Clarke agrees, laughing a bit, eyes serious. She pecks him and Emori on their cheeks, and starts up the ladder.

* * *

 They don’t seem surprised to see her. The woman with the braids grins at her and slings her pack onto her back, and as she brushes by she squeezes Clarke’s shoulder in something that feels like acceptance, like welcoming.

They set off in the morning, moving as one group, comfortable silence peppered with soft murmurs and tinkling laughter. They walk all day but it’s not rushed, and when they break for a meal in the late afternoon some of the Strecha (those closer to Clarke’s age) bang sticks on drums they also use as bags, tough hide stretched over carved out trunks or stick-contraptions. A few others dance in a circle, leaning in and out and stomping their feet to the heavy beat, writhing hips and waving hands, and Clarke grins and claps along with the others, laughing when one of the three kids, Agaila, pulls her into the circle of dancers and shows her the steps to follow.

 

They’re easy to grow fond of. They don’t judge, they’re not violent, they’re so rich in culture and unburdened youth that it makes her heart soar. They don’t question her nightmares which send her waking in an instant, but they don’t pretend they don’t know, squeezing her shoulders or clasping her forearm in solidity. Little acts of kindness that means the world to Clarke, brushing her hair or tugging her into conversations. They sing and dance when the mood hits, and they cheer when Clarke shows them her sketches. They’re young, but they’re not like the youth she’s used to. Not innocent, no, but not… haunted.

Most of the group is under thirty, with a few younger and a few older, and they accept Clarke without a question and she thinks she could learn to love them, learn to love this.

Gods, it would be so easy.

 

The landscape changes slowly, until Clarke looks up to see snow coating the branch before her in a thick blanket of white. The grass fades to rocks and gravel, and the mountains loom before them, plentiful in number and so much taller than Mount Weather ever was.

They don’t go around the mountains. They go right through them, travelling over the paths they somehow manage to find despite the odds. They meet others, other grounders, who’ve always lived in the mountains, in tents of fur or little cabins. Clarke sees the way that the mountain-siders look at her and realises that to them, she is simply a part of the Strecha like the others she travels with. She’s not Clarke Griffin, Princess, or Wanheda, Commander of Death, or an outsider, spending her days in the shadows. She’s anonymous, and abruptly it’s all she’s ever wanted and she laughs all day.

 

A pretty girl called Keena kisses her two weeks into their mountain-crossing, and Clarke almost pulls away but she doesn’t. “I think that was my first happy kiss,” Clarke breathes, Keena’s arms draped behind her neck, and Keena laughs throatily. Clarke almost wonders why she’d ever admit something like that but Keena doesn’t question it, doesn’t withdraw, just kisses her again and Clarke can feel her smiling against her lips.

Their fingers intertwine and when they make their way to camp a few of the boys cheer or wolf-whistle and raise their hands for a high-five. Clarke almost _blushes_.

"You know, you're my first girlfriend," Clarke whispers with a smile, later that week when they're bundled under furs and leaning against a tree-trunk while the snow falls around them, glowing slightly with radiation they've learned to ignore. Keena grins and hugs her tighter.

Keena loves to sing. She's from a prairie clan, far away from here, and she sings all day long, under her breath or goading the others into jubilant song with her. Sometimes they're sad songs, slow and mournful, and sometimes they're happy songs, and Clarke likes them all.

Keena decides to get another tattoo and Clarke decides she wants one as well. Keena's is of the mountains on her hips, and Clarke's is on her back, between her shoulder blades: three of Lexa's circles, sixty small dots in vertical lines around them, (for every one of her people she couldn't save,) and a crescent moon in the centre of one of the circles. "My first tattoo," Clarke murmurs, and Keena kisses the side of her head.

A couple months after they became a couple and a few weeks out of the mountains and into the prairies, they bump into another group of nomads. That night there is more celebration than ever before, some clan-members from both groups recognising tattoos and familiar faces, unified triumphant joy in being alive, in surviving, in thriving. They dance around the campfire and Clarke claps along until Keena pulls her up and tugs her into the movements. "My first official dance," Clarke breathes, blowing loose hair out of her eyes, and Keena giggles.

A few days later the groups part ways and Keena squeezes Clarke's hand tightly, pulls them so they're face-to-face. "Clarke," she says, sad and affectionate at once.

"It's okay," says Clarke, because it is. "Will this make you happy?"

"Yes," Keena answers, and Clarke smiles at her.

"Okay," she replies, "that's all I want for you."

Keena's eyes are a bit teary but she laughs and pulls Clarke into a hug.

"You know," whispers Clarke into Keena's hair, "I think this is my first real breakup."

Keena laughs loudly, fondly. "So many firsts," she says, and Clarke sticks out her tongue when she smiles back at the girl across from her.

"Yeah." They touch foreheads and Clarke closes her eyes. "And one last, too—one last kiss?" Keena's eyes are watery but she's smiling like Clarke is the sun and Clarke wants to freeze this moment in time, freeze this relationship, freeze her friend, right here, but they kiss and then Keena's hand is slipping out of her own and Clarke waves as she walks away.

 

And that's it. She doesn't sob, doesn't go numb, doesn't run away. She just—moves on. Just like that.

 

The prairies are beautiful. Long, waving grasses blow in the wind and sometimes they cut Clarke's cheeks if she isn't careful. Two girls, one a year older than Clarke and one a year younger, pick the wild flowers and braid them into Clarke's hair and into their own, and they admire each other's work happily all afternoon. The next day they accost the rest of the tribe with more flowers until almost everyone has petals adorning their heads and Clarke loves every second of this.

Clarke takes out her sketchbooks and draws the endless horizon, the flaming sunset, the flowers in their hair. She listens to Miko's stories that he tells the little ones, stories of dragons and goddesses and fire below the earth, and contentment thrums deep in her belly, one of the others leaning their head on her shoulder as they doze.

She draws Raven, leaning over a war-council table, finger pointing at something she's probably going to blow up, hair slipping out of her ponytail, body tense and in control. She's Raven how Clarke remembers her.

Later, she draws Raven again. Arms thrown out to the world around her, smile blinding, no leg-brace. She's Raven how Clarke hopes she is, up in space, far away from the world that took so much from her. Far away from Clarke.

(She banishes that thought before it can take root, but it doesn't ache like it used to.)

(She misses Raven.) (Raven won't miss her.) (Clarke closes the sketchbook, shoves it with the others into her bag, and gets up to find someone to help with something.)

 

They find a family of seven, with the two youngest ill with fever, and Clarke is stepping forward before she realises it and—she saves them. It's reassuring to know she still can.

The family thanks her over and over again, crying with a relief she knows well, and it's overwhelming until Mikail grips her shoulder from behind her and Bia (with the tower of braids) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with her and on her other side little Agaila takes her hand.

"No problem," says Clarke with a smile, and three nights later Miko gives her her next tattoo; the arm-band signifying a healer. She stares at it for a while, lost in her own head, and her friends sit around her and let her think while also letting her know that they're there, that she's not alone.

They know she's scarred, broken, that something inside of her is dark and wrong. They all have their traumas, they all know to some extent. They don't try to change her, don’t turn away, don't probe or push. They're just—there. She appreciates it more than words can convey.

 

After the prairies, rippling and exquisite, they reach the ruins of a city long-gone. No one has a problem with going straight through, so they pick their way over blocks of cement and avoid the skeletons lining the streets, looking around them at this forest of concrete and debris. They raid a few stores, those clearly abandoned but lived-in not too long ago. Clarke gets two new sketchbooks and a few of the boys hand her three tubes of paint and a brush they’d discovered.

They find guns. Clarke’s staring at them, a rifle and two handguns, lying innocently on the table, surrounded by fabrics and mason jars, just another relic waiting to be discovered. Her heart is pounding, and she can hear her blood rushing in her ears, and she’s frozen to the ground as she watches Mikail observe one of the guns curiously.

“Mikail,” says one of the girls, Jayla, looking at Clarke out of the side of her eye.

Mikail looks at her, then to Clarke.

Clarke swallows, clears her throat.

“Do you know what they are?” Mikail, Clarke remembers, comes from far away, far beyond trikru and mountain men and juveniles crashing down from space.

“Yes,” she says, and: “We shouldn’t take them.”

“Okay,” says Mikail, easily, without resentment or questions, without doubt or anything else at all, and he slings an arm over Clarke’s shoulders without another word, and all the tension in Clarke’s body melts away. Jayla hums and runs ahead of the pair, bringing back some objects for Clarke to identify, as they’ve learnt she recognises some of the relics in these cities that they’ve never seen.

Clarke squeezes Mikail back and grins when telling an excited Jayla what an iPod is, and she feels so grateful for these people that she wants to burst with it.

 

They dance, the night they leave the city, after three days of walking through towers and rubble and rusty cars. Derik, Niko, and Avoni bang on their drums, fingers beating out fast-paced rhythms and swaying from side-to side as people rise to their feet. Clarke’s smiling and clapping her hands in the beat along with some of the others, creating one finely-tuned barrage of sound, turning their bodies in synchronisation as Bia and Halily croon lowly, flowing words in a language Clarke has yet to speak but can understand as easily her own. The realisation hits her rather suddenly that she doesn’t even need to look at the others to know they’re all performing the same actions, in the same time, with the same sways, turns, claps, stomps. She understands what the song is singing of; of the sea to the south and the snow to the north and the stars above it all, she understands the soft, wild smiles on the faces of those around her. Perhaps for the first time, Clarke is exactly like everyone around her, fitting in completely despite the fact that no two of them even come from the same village.

Here, she is not privileged, she is no leader, she is not tainted, she is not any of the titles others have assigned to her over the course of her time on earth, and she loves it with a fierce joy she thinks she’s only come to know while traveling with the Strecha while relearning how to live and why to do it.

 

Months pass. Clarke gets another two tattoos, one thick and high on her left shoulder and bicep, set in black with spaces left blank for stars and trees and a bird perched on a branch, the moon in the sky as a smooth circle. The other is on the back of her neck, and it’s thin and dainty and Lexa’s infinity sign. Two of the strecha members, Zovu and Willow, teach her knife-throwing, and Mikail teaches her to perfect her archery. She spars with Bia and races Derik and Lilali, but sketching is hers and hers alone. Sometimes one or more of the others will watch her as she draws, the children resting their heads on her shoulders or pillowed on her thighs, and the others will regard her art with awe, clapping her on the shoulders or exclaiming their favourite details.

“I had lots of time to practice,” Clarke grins, and the memory of her time spent in solitary no longer chaffs at old wounds.

 

Some of the Strecha leave. Sometimes in pairs or trios, but mostly alone. Clarke doesn’t know why, where they go, if they survive. They pick up stragglers too, occasionally, from the roads they travel. For the most part, though, the group stays intact. These people know Clarke, care about her, even if they don’t know all of her history.

Clarke meets a beautiful boy called Yosif, and he makes her laugh like she’s never laughed before. They dance together around the fire on the third night he’s been travelling with them, and Mikail high-fives Clarke with a smile free of malice or mischief, bouncing off to kiss Bia on the cheek and ruffle Agaila’s tussled locks.

Yosif kisses her under the light of the moon, Clarke’s hands on his chest, and she smiles against his lips. “Is this okay?” he asks, with a smile, and Clarke kisses him back.

Yosif is fun. He gives Clarke and the kids piggyback rides, and he braids Clarke’s hair for her in the early morning. They dance together, shimmying against and toward each other, laughing when the others cheer and whoop, curving around each other in an intricate dance only they know they movements to. He teaches her his mother-tongue, and Clarke leans on his shoulder and shows him the constellations. He covers his eyes when Clarke gets her next tattoo, and Clarke laughs and laughs and squeezes his hand.

(The tattoo is of the ark’s symbol, the three interloping pointed ovals, and it’s placed just above her left hip. It’s smaller than Clarke’s palm, and bigger than the daisies Yosif braids up into a crown with Clarke’s hair.)

 

“How long have you been _Strecha_?” Clarke looks up at Yosif, leans her head against his shoulder. His hair nears his shoulders, dark and wavy, and his slanted eyes are as dark as the night, skin just a shade lighter than polished wood and shining in the light of the fire before them.

“Hm,” she says. “Over a year, I think.” It has been: sixteen months, two weeks, and five days. Clarke closes her eyes against the niggling feeling in her belly, the voice of Clarke from two years ago who’s wringing her hands in worry for all those she can’t see. The others went to space over twenty-seven months ago.

 

Yosif is lovely. He smiles easily and he’s gentle but not soft, and Clarke loves him but she isn’t in love with him. Three months after that night under the moonlight, they agree, without spoken communication, that being friends takes priority over being a couple… which does not mean that they are not a couple, simply a somewhat unconventional one. They are happy, and that is what matters. And all it matters to is them and no one else has any right to judge them and no one else does.

 

A few weeks after, they get to hunt deer. They’re traveling through a rainforest, and Clarke can’t remember any books from the ark mentioning that deer lived in tropical rainforests, but the deer are there anyways, in a huge pack, mostly mutated but there nonetheless. Clarke uses a bow and arrow and Yosif, Mikail, and Zazi accompany her, slinking along the trees, balancing precariously on branches before aiming and firing in unison.

That night they feast on dear to the sound of drums and Yosif twists Clarke’s hair into a braided crown, Zazi and Agaila slipping pink and blue flowers into her hair when he’s finished. She keeps it in a crown for weeks, keeping her hair out of her way and kissing Yosif a thank you every time he redoes it for her. Bia makes her bone earrings and Derik gives her a dagger he finds, and Clarke gets another tattoo, this one near her right shoulder and in line with her collarbone. It’s simple; scrawled letters spelling out _hofli,_ meaning hope, in loose script, messy enough that it looks almost like birds in flight, or a series of slashes like Trigedaslang.

 

Agaila and the only other child, Imodin, ask for a story and Clarke smiles at them. “One we haven’t heard before,” Agaila instructs, and Clarke hums.

“Alright,” she agrees. “Let me think.” Agaila grins and shuffles closer, sitting on the ground with Imodin while Clarke leans forward on the log she’s perched on, setting aside the knife she’d been sharpening, Halily and Willow sitting beside her and looking at her expectantly, smiles at the corners of their lips.

“Once upon a time,” Clarke begins, and takes a moment to marvel at the fact that these children, who barely remember a time before the apocalypse, can still find the time to ask for stories. “There was a kingdom in the sky.” Clarke pauses. Agaila grins wider and Imodin’s mouth opens slightly in anticipation. “The kingdom was full of good people, but the king was a desperate man, and the kingdom was beginning to sink towards the ground because there were too many people on the star where the people lived.”

Agaila says, “Ooh.”

Clarke continues. “So, because the king was desperate, he took all the children of the land and sent them to the ground. Little did the king or the children know, there were already people on the ground, and…”

 

“I liked your story,” Willow whispers later that night, when Clarke has opened her sketchbook and is attempting to capture the gentle curve of Yosif’s smile and the twinkle in his eyes.

“Thank you,” says Clarke, surprised.

Willow squeezes Clarke’s shoulder. “I am glad,” she says after a long moment, “that the princess found happiness, in the end, even without her people by her side.”

Clarke’s throat clogs up. “Thank you,” she manages, and squeezes Willow’s hand. “So am I.”

 

Time passes. It always does.

One day Clarke looks up to realise that she recognises their location, and she can see the ruins of _floukru_ on the horizon, ocean visible through gaps in the trees.

Yosif hugs her from behind. “What do you see?” he asks.

Clarke turns to face him, tries to smile, sighs and leans her forehead on his chest. “Hmm,” she murmurs, and Yosif tightens his hold on her, does not ask more questions, simply keeps his hand in hers all day as her gaze is drawn back towards the ocean time and time again, as her voice quietens and vanishes.

 

“Yosif,” she says, and he smiles at her, warm and gentle and only a bit sad. “I’m sorry,” she says, honestly, but he laughs at her and frowns a bit.

“Why are you sorry?” he asks, teasingly but eyes serious. “Don’t be sorry, Clarke. It’s okay.” She smiles at him, stands on her tiptoes to kiss him thank-you-and-goodbye, eyes wet but lips curved up.

 

Agaila cries, but Clarke crouches down to her level and presses a drawing into her hands, kisses her forehead, and the girl quietens, gives her a hug and a smile-for-the-road. Mikail presses a dagger into her hands and Bia hugs her tightly, but this is what life is, to them: people come and people go. It is no one else’s place to decide or decree what they’d rather would happen, it simply is.

They dance all night long, Clarke dancing with every person at least once, singing with Bia and Halily, drumming with Mikail and Derik, spinning in circles with Yosif and Imodin. The forest clearing rings with laughter and with music, some songs without words and some without drums and some with only humming and some with everything all together, with clapping and with stomps, and Clarke couldn’t be morose if she tried.

She parts ways with them two days after first spotting Luna’s rig.

 

Somehow, her heart is not weighed down. She knows she will be missed but not needed or mourned, she knows this is what she wants and she doesn’t have to do what anyone else wants, she knows that this is the best choice.

She’s older than she used to be. Wiser, happier. In control of her own life, of her own decisions, of her actions and her choices. It feels good and it feels free, and as she walks a grin widens on her face.

* * *

 

It takes her just under a month to reach Octavia’s bunker, and she hasn’t seen another human being in all that time, lighting a small fire of unease in her gut. The forest is duller, in a way, after having seen so much else; branches are charred and the dirt is brittle. Clarke thinks that radiation probably affected things here worse than in other places. She is suddenly overpoweringly grateful that she’d joined the _strecha_ , that she’d spent so long travelling: she can’t imagine having stayed in this same area for years on end.

“Clarke!” Octavia’s voice is shocked, desperate when she answers the radio. “You’re back! Are you okay? What happened?”

Clarke leans against the bunker hatch, smiles slightly and winds her fingers through the flowers waving in the wind, wisps of hair escaped from the braided crown drifting lazily around her face. “Hey, Octavia,” she says, and feels guilt well up inside her as she forces herself to continue. “I’m okay. Sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

Octavia makes a choked noise. “It’s been two and a half years, Clarke,” she says, like she thinks Clarke needs to be reminded, and Clarke blinks.

“I was… I was travelling, Octavia.” She laughs breathlessly. “With a group of nomads. The _strecha_. I’ve been all over, to places you wouldn’t believe…”

Octavia’s voice, when she speaks, is a bit softer, less jagged, less panicked. “Were you happy?”

Clarke plucks petals off a yellow flower, blows them into the wind and watches them toss. “Yes,” she says, and means it completely. “I still am.”

Octavia exhales, long and shaky. “I’m glad,” she says, voice softer still.

“How are you, though? Are you okay? What’s happening down there?”

Octavia chuckles and then sighs wearily. “It’s good. I’m okay, we’re all okay. Your mom got engaged, you know, to Marcus. They say they don’t want to be officially married until we’re up on the ground again, until you can be there.”

Clarke huffs in surprise, hugs her knees loosely to her chest. “Oh, that’s—wow. Tell them congratulations, I’m happy for them. How’s leadership going?” There’s a smile in her voice and Clarke wonders if Octavia can hear it, what she thinks.

A barked laugh crackles over the radio, through the vents that lead to outside where Clarke sits. “Leadership is a lot of goddamn work,” says Octavia. “Gods. _Gods_. It’s good, though. People aren’t fighting every week, y’know? There’s still a divide between… grounders, and skaikru, but. They understand that in order for us to survive, _all_ of us have to survive. We’re okay.”

There’s pride, in her voice. Clarke smiles. “Good,” she says, letting her voice soften. “I’m glad. You’re doing amazingly. Seriously. Good work.”

Octavia is silent for a long time, and when she speaks her voice is almost vulnerable. “Thanks, Clarke.”

Clarke taps her feet slowly to a rhythm she’s not heard in almost a month, sways her head. “How are—the others?”

“Oh,” replies Octavia instantly, “They’re good!” She answers Clarke’s questions before she has time to ask them, continuing, “They’re all safe, all healthy. Monty got a cold for a while but other than that they’re all doing perfect.” Clarke leans her head against the hatch, closes her eyes and exhales in the cold air, opening her eyes as the wind picks up. “They were worried sick when you just disappeared. We all were.”

Clarke sighs softly. “Sorry about that.”

If she closes her eyes, she can imagine Octavia shrugging. “It’s okay. You’d been distancing your visits anyways, so we only got really worried after a year had passed and you hadn’t come by at all, but I never thought you weren’t alive. I don’t think anyone did. You’re pretty hard to kill, Clarke.”

A wave of bitterness rises in Clarke, like it hasn’t in years, and Clarke swallows. “But they’re all okay,” she braves, pushing on.

“Yeah. Come back tomorrow, okay, please? I can tell you what they say.”

Clarke opens her mouth to speak.

“We have a meeting planned for tomorrow anyway,” Octavia adds, hurriedly, and Clarke grins.

“Yes. Okay, yeah, yes, that would be perfect.” She’s still grinning, staring up at the sky, drumming her fingers against her legs. “Would you… could you give them a message? Just tell them I’m sorry I disappeared and that I’m okay and I miss them all. You, too, Octavia. I miss you too.”

Octavia pauses, clears her throat. “I’ll tell them,” she says, sounding raspy. “I. I miss you too, Clarke.”

Clarke smiles.

 

She sleeps in the branches of a sturdy oak tree, she catches a bird and roasts it over a fire, and then she sits by the bunker hatch sketching until the sun has risen completely.

“Clarke?”

Clarke sets down her pencil. “Hey, Octavia.”

Octavia sounds relived when she replies. “Hey. Your mom says she’s glad you’re okay with her and Marcus, and she says she’s glad you’re safe and that she misses you too.”

Clarke cracks a smile and picks up her pencil again, turns to a blank page in her book and begins to etch an outline of a birch tree, bluebird perched among its leaves.

“The others were super happy to hear from you. Raven said to never pull that shit ever again, on pain of death, and Monty has demanded that you check in every three months at minimum and to damn the consequences.”

Clarke, still sketching, grins.

“Miller says that he’s going to attach a leash to you soon as they get down here but he’s glad you got a chance to explore, and Harper says she can’t wait to hear about your travels and what you’ve done but please stop giving Bellamy and everyone else heart attacks.” Clarke giggles. “Bellamy said that they miss you too and he’s glad you’re okay and he hopes you’re here to stay now.” (There’s a question in her words, a challenge from the Octavia that Clarke used to know.)

Clarke exhales from her mouth, slow and steady, boldens the raven in the tree with the edge of her pencil tip. “Yeah,” she says finally. “I’m here to stay.”

“Good.” Octavia’s tone is brisk but there’s no disguising the relief underneath is.

“Thank you for doing this, Octavia. Seriously, thank you.”

Octavia huffs. “It’s no problem, Clarke.”

Clarke closes her sketchbook and slips her pencil into a jacket pocket. “I’ve got to go check on Murphy and Emori,” she says, not quite apologetically.

“Yeah,” agrees Octavia understandingly, smile in her voice. “But, Clarke? You come back within three months, okay?”

Clarke laughs. “Okay,” she grins. “I promise.”

“Three months,” Octavia repeats sternly, and Clarke laughs, loud and free.

“Bye, Octavia.” She picks up the book and walks into the woods. (She misses Octavia’s goodbye.)

 

She stands above the bunker door. “C’mon,” she mutters, and doesn’t move. She’s suddenly deathly afraid. What if they’re not there, what if they’re dead, what if the bunker leaked? What if they don’t want to see her, what if they’re angry she was gone so long? She almost turns back, but then she thinks _I promised I’d come back_ , and she leans down with steady hands.

She hops down from the ladder and turns to see Emori and John with knives pointed at her dangerously before they realize it’s her and Emori’s knife clatters to the ground in surprise.

“Clarke!”

“Holy shit,” says John, and he’s smiling and then he’s grinning and Clarke is just staring at them until Emori cheers, _Clarke!_ and yanks Clarke into a hug, laughing delightedly.

“Hey, John,” says Clarke, somewhat uncertainly, (because: she still remembers his words, she still remembers the start of their relationship, she still remembers,) and John reaches down to squeeze her into a hug.

“Hey, Clarke,” he says amicably. “You better have some damn good stories to tell us, Griffin.”

Clarke beams. “Two _years_!” Exclaims Emori, “You were gone for _over two years_! Forget _good_ , I expect _amazing_ stories!”

Clarke laughs and pulls the pair into another hug, closing her eyes and releasing the tension she’d built up fearing what they’d say to her.

 

“I like this,” Emori says later, after Clarke’s been talking for hours, all three bunched up on the couch, running her normally-shaped hand over Clarke’s hair.

Clarke smiles at her. “Thanks. Yosif, my boyfriend, did it for me.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Boyfriend,” he repeats, and he’s grinning slyly.

Clarke rolls her eyes but she can’t wipe the smile off her face. “Yeah. We were together… what, almost a year? And Keena and I were only together a few months but I knew her from the start.”

“Griffin’s got _game_ ,” Murphy crows, Emori looking at him affectionately, and Clarke throws her head back and laughs.

 

(“But really,” says Emori, squeezing Clarke’s knee. “The significant others aren’t the most interesting aspects of your travels. John’s just deflecting. He hates being cooped up in here.”

Clarke smiles at her, squeezes her hand back. “It was nice, though, the significant others. Normal.”

Emori’s eyes are somewhat sad when she replies. “You’ve not had much of that, have you.”)

 

“You kept the wall,” Clarke says, and John looks at her in surprise.

“Of course,” he replies, like it wasn’t ever a debate, and maybe it wasn’t.

“We updated it, though,” Emori adds, winding her arms around John’s waist and smiling at Clarke, pointing towards the mural with one finger.

On one of the mountain tops, a clunky white and silver ship sits glistening. “Oh,” Clarke breathes.

“There’s more,” says Emori, and directs Clarke’s gaze downwards. Two silhouettes stand hand in hand, one with a lumpy hand, in the bottom right-hand corner of the image, and a bit to the side of the pair is another figure emerging from the forest and facing the sunrise with the other two. Clarke lets her fingers hover over the image she knows depicts herself, tracing them towards the duo shining in the sunset.

“I love it,” she says, and her voice is hoarser than she’d expected.

("Oh my god, shut up, you sap," John mutters and shoves her shoulder, but there isn't any bite to the words.)

 

The next morning finds Clarke dancing with Emori around the kitchen, music blasting, twisting to the Jackson Five and Pharrell Williams, hair open and spinning around her as she shimmies towards Emori and back again, grinning widely as Emori laughs.

“Good morning to you too,” John rasps from the doorway, but his eyes are crinkling.

“John!” Clarke cries, dancing her way over to him, Emori laughing louder as he stares at her incredulously.

“Dance with me,” Clarke invites, eyes twinkling mischievously, and John eyes her distrustfully. “Come _on_ ,” Clarke teases, lifting an eyebrow in challenge, and John sighs dramatically and holds out his hands.

“Yes!” Clarke cheers, tugging him around in a circle and moving his hands from side to side, Emori cackling in the background as she opens a can of celebratory peaches and some of the berries Clarke had brought with her.

John’s looking at her like he’s amused but almost can’t believe what he’s seeing and Clarke bops her head from side to side in time to the music, shoulders roving, and Emoir’s singing along to the songs playing, and Clarke wants to freeze this moment and keep it forever.

 

She forgets. (How much she’s changed, the time she’s been away, what she’s seen and done, it doesn’t matter.) She forgets, and she slips her borrowed sweater off her head without a second thought, tugging the singlet a bit lower over her abdomen, turning around to ask if any of the TV shows on the old TV were any good, and finds both John and Emori staring.

“Um,” she says, unsure, “Is something wrong?”

That’s when she suddenly remembers the tattoos. Perfect timing as always.

“Damn, girl,” whistles Emori, but she’s smiling.

John’s just staring, something unknown flickering in his eyes. “Can we see them?” he asks, after a long moment, and Clarke wordlessly nods.

He steps forward, Emori at his side, and curiously looks at her arm. “It stands for—”

“Healer,” finishes Emori, and squeezes Clarke’s arm. “I’m glad.”

“And this one?” John asks, pokes at the bold tattoo on her opposite arm.

“A drawing,” Clarke shrugs. “I wanted an earthy tattoo.”

Emori nods like this makes sense, but John is just shaking his head continuously, a small, disbelieving smile pulling at his lips.

Emori moves the strap of the shirt slightly off Clarke’s shoulder. “This one?”

“Hope,” Clarke explains, “In the style of the _strecha’s_ insignia,” and then lifts her shirt slightly at the bottom to show the duo the ark’s logo in the space above her hip bone.

She turns, after a moment where they _hmm_ and _humm_ at this, and lifts up her hair over one shoulder to reveal the back tattoo to them, lifting higher to show Lexa’s partially-dotted infinity symbol. Emori’s fingers graze just slightly over her back, tugging the shirt lower to see more o the lengthy ink.

“This is gorgeous, Clarke,” she murmurs.

Clarke turns with a smile, and meets John’s eyes. “What does that one mean?” He asks, and Clarke sits on the back of the couch behind her, avoids his gaze for a moment.

“The circles are Lexa’s,” she says slowly. “And the lines are, um. Not kill marks, exactly, my back isn’t big enough for those,” she trails off, the familiar words leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, and then shakes the memories away, “but, um. A tally, I guess.”

John’s eyes are sad when he meets her nervous gaze. “The 100.”

“Those I couldn’t save,” Clarke agrees, fidgeting with the bottom of her shirt, and makes a surprised noise when John’s arms encircle her firmly, his hands gentle as she grips the back of his shirt lightly, takes a deep breath.

Emori joins her on the couch, perching on the edge, and brushes a strand of hair away from Clarke’s face. “They’re beautiful,” she says kindly. “You’ve gone full grounder.” This last part is said teasingly, but Clarke, still being hugged by John Murphy (hugged! By John Murphy!) shakes her head into his shoulder.

“No,” she counters. “I’ve gone full Clarke. I’m just me.”

 

She stays with them for the next three days, showing them her sketches and swinging her feet on the counter while John cooks and sitting squished up against them on the couch and talking throughout the night.

Sometimes it’s easier to forget that they came from the sky, that they lived months in one war after the next, that they are murderers and capable of genocide, that they have only lived on earth for a few years, that they are still waiting. This is not one of those times.

“Just over a year left,” John says, when Emori’s dozing against his side and Clarke’s sitting with her back to the couch’s armrest and sketching their profiles.

“Mm,” agrees Clarke, and looks up when the silence stretches.

“If I didn’t have Emori,” John murmurs, “If I didn’t have you to bring us news…”

Clarke stops sketching.

John shrugs. “Five years is a long goddamn time to be stuck underground.” His voice is hoarse, eyes tired.

Clarke fumbles forward to sit beside him, legs curled under her body, squeezes his knee with her hand and rests her head on his shoulder, suddenly inescapably exhausted. “Yeah.”

 

(“At least I’ve got Emori, though,” he will say. “You’re out there by yourself.” Compassion is new to John Murphy and Clarke will barely remember who he used to be before this.

“It’s not so bad,” Clarke will say, and maybe it isn’t but maybe it is.)

 

“What now?” Emori’s curious and John looks at her for her answer but Clarke just shrugs, smiles, spins in a circle.

“I’m not sure yet,” She admits cheerily, and isn’t this a wonder, that she doesn’t have to know, that no one needs her to know. John rolls his eyes but he’s smiling and Emori reaches over him to give her a high-five and Clarke’s grinning and she thinks _gods, whatever I was doing before Praimfaiya sure as hell wasn’t living._

* * *

 

She sits on the edge of a rocky cliff-face, legs swinging over the edge, palms flat beside her on the soft ground. The wind is blowing her hair behind and around her, strands escaping her braid and floating around her face. Below and before her lies the valley, in parts burnt and blackened and in others so green they seem to glow.

“Hurry back,” she says to the sky, and sighs.

* * *

 

“Hello,” Clarke says the horse before her, “I’m Clarke. You’re what’s been following me, huh?” She holds her hand out and the horse, a gorgeous tortoiseshell of browns and russet shades, snuffles against it without fear.

“Hmm,” says Clarke when the horse is still by her side hours later, following her around the forest and stealing berries from Clarke’s hands.

 

“I found a horse,” Clarke says in greeting, and Emori blinks. “I’m calling him Aden.”

“Cool,” says John, reaching forward to accept that jar Clarke hands him. “What did you bring us? Priorities, Emori.”

Emori grins, lips pulling to one side, and Clarke laughs a bit. “Berries, nuts,” she answers, pulling out a second jar from her bag. “A fish. Some bird.”

“Ooh, fish,” Emori replies appreciatively. “What’s this about a horse?”

“Aden,” Clarke corrects, setting her bag on the ground by the ladder and shrugging off her jacket and sweater, rolling her shoulders. “People tamed horses, right? It’s not impossible.”

“Pretty hard, though,” Emori counters, “Especially if they were wild.”

“True,” Clarke concedes, heading curiously over to where John is making an obscene amount of noise in the kitchens. “But this one followed me around for days. He won’t be too hard to find again, and I’m sure I can find a saddle somewhere.”

“Good luck,” Emori says, but she’s smiling.

John turns around to find them in the kitchen and shakes his head. “Seeing you with those tattoos will never not be weird, Griffin,” he mutters, and she grins, flexing her biceps. “It’s like entering an alternative dimension.”

“Ooh, those are big words, Murphy,” Clarke retorts, hopping onto to the countertop, ducking the spoon he flings at her head in retaliation.

 

Time passes, as it always will. Clarke starts to wear a ponytail, John tells Clarke he wants to spend his life with Emori and probably will, Octavia tells Clarke that the others have started planning for their descent. Clarke doesn’t see anyone, not a single soul. She wonders where the dancers have gone, where the families have fled, if any of them still live. Radiation didn’t manage to kill everyone the first time there was a nuclear war, why would it succeed the second time? ( _And,_ whispers Wanheda in Clarke’s head, sounding like Becca, _ALIE said 96% of the earth. That’s a whole four percent left_.) Radiation takes time. Some things are only now beginning to crumble, to burn, to fade. Other things are starting to thrive.

 

“Nine months left,” John sings.

“Yes,” Clarke agrees. “Also, I brought you a painting.”

“Oh,” says John, and Clarke passes him the frame she’d constructed of twigs and hide. The drawing itself is of the view that directly presents itself upon leaving their bunker. A small clearing surrounded by trees and stumps, softly glowing moss and shadowy birds. The greens in the painting and warm and vibrant, and golden light streams through the treetops and illuminates the leaves on the ground.

Clarke smiles in satisfaction as John reverently carries the painting into the kitchen, holding it up and humming his disapproval of the places Emori suggests they hang it.

“I,” Clarke announces after dinner, when they’re all sitting in the living area silently, John reading a book, Emori sharpening a knife, Clarke sketching, “am going to build you a cabin.”

The couple exchange glances. “Thank you,” Emori says kindly, “How?”

“Why, exactly?” John adds, usual smirk somewhat confused.

“Because,” Clarke declares with an air of finality, “That’s what I’m going to do next.”

And that’s that.

 

(John had said: _nine months left_. And Clarke had thought: _that is a long time_. There’s a lot of things one could do in nine months. She will not spend the remainder of her solitude waiting for the pin to drop, hovering between nothing and everything. She is going to continue living, as she has been living for four years and three months. This is her life. She will not let others dictate it, never again.)

 

Aden is a wild horse, and Clarke is not a horse tamer. They make do anyway. Aden follows Clarke around and she feeds him and pets him and braids his hair, and sometimes Aden canters around her or back and forth before her and she giggles. Clarke finds a saddle, eventually, in the ruins of Niylah’s trading post, and Aden eyes it distrustfully but settles when Clarke bribes him with the berries he likes so much more than she does. It takes her weeks to go from putting the saddle on the horse and putting herself on the horse, but from there it’s fairly straight-forward. She’s ridden before but certainly not extensively, and she’s not the fastest and Aden’s not the most docile creature, but: “I’ll be going back and forth between Octavia’s bunker, and John and Emori’s bunker, and the cabin, and looking for food and supplies, and preparing, and really this is just so much more efficient so please work with me here.”

The cabin is her other project. She’s entirely serious about it.

(“Clarke,” says John uncomfortably the only other time they bring it up, “You’ve already found us one place to live.” Clarke doesn’t reply, ignoring his eyes, old guilt— ancient and familiar— rising to the surface as she remembers _I was saving you_.)

She finds old sheets of metal and steel, old fishing nets, planks of wood and an axe. The supplies pile up beside the bunker door and Clarke surveys it with a nod. She uses Niylah’s place as something like a reference, sketching the design and the construction with a critical eye and a fast-moving pencil.

(She doesn’t go to villages for reference, doesn’t study any other houses—no.)

 

“It doesn’t have to be for John and Emori,” Clarke explains to Aden as she clips her bag onto his saddle. “It could be, you know, a med bay, or a community hall, or a storage unit, or a hiding place, or whatever. But I figure, well, I’m here anyway, and they’ll be coming down to find everything gone, and. I do care, you know.” She pats Aden’s neck, sighs against his neck.

She doesn’t deceive herself with illusions of redemption, with dreams of forgiveness. They were anything but a cohesive unit even before spending five years in close quarters. She feels as uneven, as unsteady as she did when eating dinner with John and Emori all those years ago, so scared to screw things up even further.

“And, well,” Clarke murmurs as she swings herself into the saddle and pats Aden’s mane as a sign for him to start walking, “There’s a whole world out there. After everything’s settled, after everyone’s okay… well. This isn’t all that there is.”

 

(Sometimes she dreams of Keena, her loud, throaty laugh and her never-ending songs. Sometimes she thinks of Yosif, with his comfortable hugs and the soft and wild look in his eyes when they’d dance together. Sometimes, she looks at the horizon and, just for a moment, she remembers a time where she wasn’t tethered and she wasn’t timed and where the horizon itself was nothing but the next challenge, the next destination, the next invitation.)

 

She goes to the city where she spent the apocalypse. It’s dusty and Clarke has to wrap a cloth over her mouth and nose, and the sky is orange-yellow-burgundy, the clouds thick and rolling. The buildings are still tall but crumbling, from what Clarke can see, squinting and holding a gloved hand against the sun. Remnants of skeletons line the streets they ride through, Aden’s uneasiness making Clarke jittery. Most of the windows in the buildings they pass are gone or too cracked to use, but Clarke finds four solid panes she can refurbish for the cabin, as well as blankets and a mattress.

“I don’t know how,” Clarke tells a patient Aden, “but I am going to put that in the cabin if it kills me. No more pine needle beds, no.”

She also finds a kitchen knife, a pot, a pan, and a rifle. She picks up the rifle and slings it over her shoulder.

“Not for hunting,” Clarke explains quietly, “or self-defence or threats or anything like that.” For larger animals, she thinks, or just to have it there. In case she runs out of arrows, in case the others can’t help her hunt and can’t make do with traditional weapons. Whatever the case, she slows her breathing and shakes off the unease that comes from carrying the gun on her back, the paranoia that her back tattoos (the sixty she couldn’t save) are in direct contact with a weapon that killed many of them.

And there are _paints_. She finds paints, in tubes with faded writing. Red, blue, white, black, green, yellow. She piles everything onto Aden and hums the whole way back, occasionally checking that the paints are still there, grinning. The trip, three weeks on foot, is shorter with Aden by over a week. “I’m serious,” mutters Clarke to a solemn Aden. “I am getting that mattress.”

 

She heads straight to Emori and John’s bunker, scales the ladder with ease, and hugs Emori hello the second her feet touch the ground.

“You’re late.” John sounds only slightly aggrieved and Clarke sends him an apologetic smile, withdrawing from Emori’s embrace.

“Sorry.” He rolls his eyes at her half-assed apology and heads to the kitchen, grumbling under his breath. Clarke grins.

“Missed you too, asshole,” she calls out, and he raises his middle finger to the air without a backwards glance.

 

“Okay.” Her hands are on her hips, ponytail blowing in the light breeze, Aden peacefully winding between the trees that circle the clearing she’s using, a large, empty green space with the forest on all sides and a shining lake circled by the woods. “Okay.” She surveys the pile of supplies before her with a critical eye, runs her tongue over her teeth once, and then sharply nods. She can do this.

She starts with the frame of the building, propping up fallen trees in four corners and using pillaged nails to hold them down. She sheds her sweater and jacket as she works, wiping the sweat off her brow and scowling at the sun during the peak of the day. With the pillars done, she starts on the floor, using flat sheets of metal from ark wreckage and hammering the sheets to the ground stubbornly, making sure to even the ground out before anything final happens.

By the time she’s finished that, the sun’s light is fading and Clarke’s shirt is soaked through with sweat. She’s left with the beginnings of a house, long enough for three people lying down head to toe and wide enough for the same. 

It’s good, she thinks. A good start.

 

Over the next few days she works tirelessly on the house, hoping to have most of the work done before she has to meet up at Octavia’s bunker. The walls are a slow process, tying poles and branches together with twine and vines, hammering them into the ground and using the inside of the walls to lay two horizontal planks of wood across, one at the top and one at the bottom. It takes her over a day to complete just the one wall, at one point so frustrated that she has the sudden and inescapable urge to light the entire structure on fire. The fourth wall faces the space between the forest and the lake, and Clarke doesn’t fill this wall in completely, leaving the middle of the wall wide open and exposed. Here, she ties a horizontal rod on the inside of the roofless building and attaches nets and raggedy fabrics so that there’s an entry and an exit to the cabin, of sorts.

She doesn’t want to risk bringing down the roof so she saws away parts of the wall while the building is still roofless, wedging glass into the spaces and using scavenged rubber to hold it in place, holding a torch close enough for the rubber to melt to the glass and to the walls, all the way around the squares she carved away with her dagger. Now her cabin has a floor, four walls, an entryway, one window in each side and two in the back wall, and no roof. Considering she’s been winging it, Clarke thinks she’s doing pretty well. It’s been just over a week of non-stop work and she hops onto Aden and spurs him on into the direction of the bunker.

 

“We’re starting to get ready for earth,” Octavia tells her, after they’ve greeted each other, as Clarke’s watching Aden trot around, tossing his head, flowers braided through his mane.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Octavia sounds almost tense. (Almost, almost.) “We’re all itching to see sunlight again, to stretch our souls. To have some space to ourselves.”

Clarke smiles softly.

“I think people are starting to wonder about what will happen after,” Octavia continues, more exhausted. “If we’ll still be _wonkru_ when we don’t have to be.”

Clarke frowns, wishing she could hold Octavia’s hand, knowing her words will have to do. “Even getting them to this point is a feat in itself,” she speaks slowly, deliberately and decisively, meaning every word. “You’ve gotten them this far, Octavia. From here on, you can do anything. After this, they will follow you anywhere.”

* * *

 

The roof is the hardest part. She nails tin and wood together, layer upon layer, fits a raggedy tent on the underside and then another layer of holey fabric, and stares at the cabin.

She glances at the roofless cabin, at the trees nearby, and at an already-suspicious Aden.

“Well,” says Clarke. “Well.”

 

She gets it on, eventually. It takes a lot of pushing, a lot of pulling, and for Aden to stand very still as she lugs the roof up and into its designated location, yelping and reaching forward to keep it from sliding over the edge immediately after. She sits on the roof, sun blazing down on her, nailing the edges of the roof onto the building and melting rubber until her fingers blister.

The building isn’t too high but it’s high enough that when Clarke stands in the centre of the room, arms stretching up, she can only just graze the roof. “Hell yeah,” she whispers to the empty room, “I did this.”

 

The next part is easier, pulling leftover scraps into the room and hammering them together to create a table and something like a countertop. She unloads her collectables and her trinkets from the two backpacks she’s grown accustomed to carrying around, keeping the few clothes she has and packing them into a weaved basket she’d created near trikru territory. Beside the counter sits a metal pail full of water from a nearby river, with one of the ark’s weird flat cups sitting on the counter and ready for use. She makes baskets and assembles chests and drawers out of wood, using them to store weapons, furs, paints, and trinkets she’s collected on her way, including shells and seaglass from the ocean and a necklace Halily made for her and Bia’s bone earrings and Derik’s intricately carved dagger. Her bow and arrow hang on one of the sides beside the entrance, and she cleans the jars she’d found in the city and uses them to store food, lining them up on the countertop, her sketchbooks all in a row.

It feels like a home.

* * *

“I’m almost done the house,” Clarke announces, and John leans over Emori to give her a high-five.

“Good timing.” Emori commends her without looking up from one of Clarke’s sketchbooks, fingers reverent as she flips the page and traces the outline of one of the _strecha_ with her hair braided around her head and flowers nestled throughout. “We’ve only got four months left.”

Clarke sits up lightly, her knees curled in front of her, one arm draped across the back of the couch. Emori sits beside her and John is sprawled artlessly on the other side. “Four months,” Clarke repeats, wonder in her voice, speculation and awe and under that surface nervousness bubbles up.

“Four months,” John echoes, knees over the couch arm and head lolling by Emori’s knees. “Four months, _four_ months, four _months_ , _four months_.”

 

She heads back to the city, armed with a hand-crafted stretcher, of sorts, not unlike the one she’d used to drag an unconscious Anya around so long ago. A wagon would have been more practical, and she could have used old rover tires, but she doesn’t want to waste any cabin supplies, so the stretcher will have to do. She can make a wagon later, anyway.

She finds the mattress easily and lugs it back the way she came, adding a _proper_ chest, a rug, and a set of coloured pencils.

Just over four weeks on the road with nothing but her horse and the sky to keep her company, as Clarke lies on the mattress at night and stares up at the stars, hands folded over her chest. “This’ll all change,” she murmurs to the constellations. “Just a few months and everything will change.”

She recoils from the notion but she wonders nevertheless: will it change for the better? It’s a selfish thought, the worries of a child Clarke no longer is, but. It’s a thought.

 

She goes into the water before she starts on the bedframe, enjoying the summer (because it is summer, isn’t it, Praimfaiya was always warm but this is something else) and stripping down to her bra and underwear to giggle and learn to float on her back and gaze at the sun, walking out until her tip-toes can only just reach the bottom, teaching herself how to stay afloat.

 _I’m swimming,_ she thinks, and grins for hours afterwards.

 

The bedframe is easier than she’d thought. She wraps four poles around each other and uses a net and a roll of branches tied together with twine in the middle of the frame. She nails the pegs up underneath the bed and cheers when it’s complete, pulling the mattress onto the frame and laughing with satisfaction when it slides snuggly into position. The rug lies on the ground in the centre of the room and partly underneath the bed, edges frayed but cosy nonetheless. She carefully piles furs and blankets on top, storing the leftovers in the chest by the foot of the bed, and whoops in triumph.

She dances around the cabin the next day, humming to a song she can still hear in her dreams, teasing Aden as she twirls around him, adding the finishing touches to the cabin she created out of sweat and determination. (Paintings go over this way, the firepit goes outside over here and a spit for roasting meat goes just there, a circle of vertical sticks for Aden to stay in goes that way, the line for drying clothes go that way.)

“I did this,” she grins. “ _I_ did this.”

 

(She sleeps in the bed that night and thinks it’s the start of something new and beautiful.)

 

“Hey, Clarke.” Octavia sounds different, somehow.

“Hey, Octavia.” Maybe Clarke sounds different too. She can’t imagine that she sounds the same.

“Two months left, huh?”

Clarke grins, reaches up to undo her ponytail and let her hair tumble down, threading her fingers through the long waves, sun-bleached and curliest at the ends. “Yep,” she agrees. “You excited?”

Octavia takes a moment to reply. “Yeah,” she replies, and Clarke can hear the smile in her voice, can picture the way her face is lighting up with fierce anticipation. “We all are. Gods, Clarke, we’re so close.”

Clarke laughs. “Closer than we’ve ever been.”

Octavia laughs too, an almost (almost, almost,) unfamiliar sound. “The space crew is getting ready too. Raven says they should make the deadline within a week or so at latest.”

Clarke feels some tension she didn’t know she carried melt out of her shoulders, hair blowing around her and one leg stretched out before her, the other bent at the knee, chin resting on top of it. “Gods.”

“Yeah.” Clarke is quietly grateful, horribly grateful, that at least she isn’t the only one down here while they float above their heads. Murphy, Emori, she has them and she loves them but it isn’t the same: they have always cared more for each other than they will about others and they have never fit in with those they were supposed to. Clarke and Octavia are united in that they have been separated by those they love for nearly five years and they are treading the same uncertain waters, even as one perches beside a bunker hatch and the other rests her elbows on her desk miles below the surface.

“It doesn’t really feel real, does it,” Octavia says eventually.

Clarke huffs a laugh that is part sigh. “It’s going to be weird, having them here with us. I know it should feel like it’ll be going back to normal, but…”

“This is normal, for us. This is our normal now.” Octavia finishes her train of thought and Clarke looks up at the rolling clouds and wonder if up in space anyone is looking down.

“Yeah,” she says after a moment. Nothing more needs to be said. They both understand.

 

“I finished your cabin,” Clarke sings as she hops down the ladder and is greeting by the sight of Emori and John dancing around their living room, grinning with hands intertwined.

“Hey, lovebirds,” she teases without any hint of bitterness, and John disentangles his hand to flip her off, still smiling, ineffective as Clarke giggles and hops onto the back of the couch.

“Hey Clarke,” Emori sings back, grabbing John’s hand and moving their hands from side to side, twirling over to where Clarke sits.

The duo parts to hop up on the couch beside her, Clarke in-between the two, and as Clarke laughs all three of them tip back in unison to fall backwards, feet still in the air as their backs land on the couch.

“Hey there, asshole,” John grins, and his teeth shine. His shark-smile is almost gone, these days.

“Don’t call me an asshole,” Clarke retorts, mock-offended, but with a grin of her own, “I built you a cabin! Love me!”

Emori cheers and clumsily reaches over to messily kiss Clarke’s cheek. John rolls his eyes but taps his feet companionably against Clarke’s.

“ _Knew_ you could do it,” Emori says enthusiastically, patting Clarke’s hand. “Never doubted you for a _second_.” Clarke glances at her out of the side of her eye, and then laughs and laughs and laughs.

 

There’s a week left. Clarke’s sitting on the top of a nearby mountain, her feet swinging over the edge of a crater she might have once found too close for comfort. There are rain clouds on the horizon, fast-approaching, faster than they ever would have before Praimfaiya.

Aden nickers from somewhere behind her and she hums, low in her throat.

 _Everything is going to change,_ Clarke thinks, watching the storm as it broils and flashes in the not-so-far-off distance. As the rain begins to fall, Clarke holds out a hand and raises her head, acceptance settling in her heart, and she thinks, _everything will change, but I am a survivor and I am adaptable and I can change too._

 

The dilemma of _do I go to Octavia_ or _do I do to John and Emori_ lasts only a minute. She’s going to John and Emori, of course she is. They’re her family. (Not people, not _her people_. Never again _her people_.)

 

“Who’s ready for earth?” Clarke calls out as she hops to the floor and turns on her heel, picking her way over the rucksacks on the floor to make her way to their bedroom and poke her head inside.

“Hey,” Emori says, waving a hand. John, beside her, looks up and smirks.

“Hey, princess,” he greets, tossing her a can of peaches. He’s reverted to the old nickname lately, Clarke thinks with an eyeroll, remembering the one day four years in where he’d referred to her as _wanheda_ and she’d been so quiet for the rest of the afternoon he’d never done it again, his own way of apologising, of showing that he cares. They don’t need to acknowledge it with words. This is their way and this is the way it is.

“Ooh, peaches,” Clarke hums, hopping onto their bed and crossing her legs, unslinging her bag from her shoulders and popping the can inside. She’s been taking things up to the cabin for the past few days, mostly food and clothes. John and Emori are now packing the last of it, the last of what they need from this life into the next. Clarke sees Emori pack speakers and an iPod into her bag and grins.

“Last night in the burrow,” Clarke says carefully.

“Hallelujah,” John replies reverently, and Emori rolls her eyes and grins as Clarke snickers.

 

The morning arrives quickly. Clarke wakes to find John already gone from the bed, Emori still fast asleep on her stomach, and as she slowly wakes, rubbing her eyes and yawning, John pokes his head around the corner.

“Morning, princess,” he says softly, to avoid waking Emori.

Clarke blinks blearily at him. “I made breakfast,” he offers, and Clarke blinks again before flopping back down and burrowing herself under the blankets beside Emori.

John laughs.

 

“C’mon, Griffin,” he whines five minutes later, trying to tug her out of bed without rousing Emori.

“No,” Clarke grouches stubbornly, arms folded defiantly under her pillow, John’s hands pulling at her elbow.

John groans and yanks at her arm fruitlessly.

Clarke cracks open one eye to glare at him. “Go away,” she growls.

John glares back. “Someone has to help me get everything ready, and it’s not gonna be Emori, so get your ass out of bed, princess!” He’s whisper-shouting now but Clarke simply narrows her eyes.

“Not gonna be me, either,” she snaps.

John groans again and releases her arm, flipping her off.

“Concede defeat, John.” Clarke raises her middle finger in a salute and melts into the pillow as he grumbles away.

 

“Good morning,” mumbles Emori.

“Good morning,” Clarke answers sweetly, and grins viciously when she can hear John release a list of incredulous, outraged expletives from the living room.

 

“You ready?” She’s got her bag on, one hand on a ladder rung, surveying the couple before her. her heart is pumping, and she can feel it in her wrists, in her fingertips. Adrenaline is rushing throughout her body and there’s a smile on her face.

John and Emori grab each other’s hand in unison. “Ready,” John confirms, and Emori nods firmly.

Clarke grins, wild and free and adrenalized, squashing down the worry that wants to overwhelm her. “Well, then,” she opts to say, lifting herself onto the ladder and beginning the climb, “Let’s show you the world.”

 

John squints, raising his hand before his eyes, and Emori beams, feet somewhat uncertain, palms up and eyes wide open as the morning sunlight streams through the trees.

No one says anything for a few minutes, and then John shakily laughs. “Man,” he breathes, “I am so goddamn glad to be out of that bunker, holy shit. Holy _shit_.”

Clarke grins and Emori laughs wildly, still stepping in circles.

“Thank you,” she says, and Clarke smiles softly, choking on the words, on the long-ago guilt. Her smile almost slips but she blinks firmly and keeps it stuck to her face stubbornly.

John smiles at her and looks like he’s choking too. She wonders what on.

 

* * *

 "Well,” John will say eventually, grinning, “show us this house of ours, Griffin.”

* * *

 

It isn’t a long walk to the clearing, under an hour when without interruptions. Clarke knows the couple will be unused to strenuous activities like walking long distances, so they walk slowly, soaking everything in, listening to the birdcalls with a joy Clarke thinks she only learnt after Praimfaiya. The couple will walk hand-in-hand and Clarke will glance at them every few minutes, still smiling, to remind herself that this is real, this is happening, this is now. She can be excited. This is happening. This is real. This is now.

When they reach the clearing, they stop short. Clarke can hear Emori’s breath catch in her throat.

The cabin seems to glow in the sunlight, the lake gleaming and sparkling, the grass soft and wreathed with flowers. The firepit and the clothesline are cosy and natural and—this looks like a home. This _is_ a home.

“Holy shit,” says John, beaming from ear to ear. “You did this, Clarke.”

Clarke grins. “I did this,” she agrees, and feels like the light warms her straight to her bones.

 

Emori circles the house once, twice, as Clarke pushes the entry-way nets to the side and John wanders around the interior. Clarke pretends not to see John brush under his eyes with fingers that don’t shake but come close to it. Emori is laughing wildly, almost incredulous and almost affectionate, and she slips her arms around Clarke’s waist and rests her chin on Clarke’s shoulder as they stand in the middle of the building she brought to life.

 

They spend the night by the cabin, feasting on bird and berries, dancing around the firepit and trying to catch the unnaturally bright fireflies, John staring and staring at the luminescent sky above them alight with stars.

Eventually they tumble to the bed and fall asleep on the (thankfully big enough) mattress, Emori curled into John and Clarke stretched out beside her, one hand winded throughout Emori’s hair. Clarke falls asleep to the sound of two people breathing, the crickets outside, and the low whistle of the wind, and she is nothing like the seventeen-year-old who gave up everything to protect her people.

 

They head off in the morning, Clarke piling supplies onto Aden as Emori coos kindly and John watches the horse with an expression that’s part wariness, part curiosity. Clarke sings under her breath as they go, running her fingers through the bushes as she walks, leading Aden with one hand, Emori and John sitting atop for some of the time, walking beside her for the rest. Emori does her hair when they stop to eat, braiding it out of her face and tying it off into Clarke’s now-customary ponytail, and Clarke braids Emori’s hair into a crown around her head and threads white and yellow flowers into it, making grabby fingers at John until he lets her slip a flower behind his ear, too.

By the time they hear the slow sounds of life, Clarke’s shed her jacket and her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, laughing with Emori as John walks with his hands in his pockets and an almost nervous anticipation shining in his eyes.

(“Hey,” says Clarke. “We’re—we’re us, okay, no matter what the others think, no matter what they think of us. We’re us. We don’t need anyone else.”

John’s smile is sharper than it has been in years, not the shark-smile but something with edge, almost protective, almost defiant. “Just us,” he agrees. “Together.”)

* * *

 

“Clarke!” It’s Octavia who sees them first, as it should be, Clarke thinks, and her yell causes a hush to fall over the crowds, hundreds of heads turning to her at once, and then Octavia is pushing her way through to them, bodily shoving people aside, and the two girls stare at each other before Octavia begins to laugh in amazement and they’ve flung themselves into each other’s arms. The crowd murmurs and begins to move on, (Clarke knows it isn’t over, she _knows_ ,) and Octavia laugh-sobs into Clarke’s neck, her arms muscular and tight as they grip Clarke close to herself, and everything is perfect and good and better than she’d ever dared to hope.

When they finally pull away from each other, Octavia’s hands gripping her arms, happy tears shining on the younger girl’s face, Octavia looks at her, fierce and feral and grinning, and says, “Gods, Clarke, I’ve missed you.” (You look beautiful, you look happy, you look whole and I am happy for you.)

Clarke looks at her, this no-longer-a-girl, with her long hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail Clarke recognises from her mother, face free of warpaint save for the mark on her forehead that Clarke remembers from days long past spent in a dying city. “I’ve missed you too,” Clarke whispers, voice soft with affection and guilt resurfacing and feelings entirely too complex to name.

Octavia laughs wetly and slips her arm around Clarke’s waist and together they survey the masses around them, skaikru and trikru and all krus together and more alike than Clarke can ever recall them being before. “Told you that you could do it,” Clarke tells her softly, and Octavia’s loose arm tightens on Clarke’s waist.

“Yeah,” she says, and the wonder Clarke may have expected to hear in her voice a few years isn’t there anymore. Instead, Clarke hears Octavia proud and strong and every inch the leader Octavia never thought she’d ever become. “We made it, Clarke.”

Clarke squeezes the younger girl and grins at her. “Not just us,” she says, and right on time she can hear John and Emori making their way over, and Clarke pulls out of Octavia’s embrace to watch as Octavia’s confused expression splits into a smile as she rushes forward to greet the couple, despite not knowing them well and having a less than pleasant history with John: the apocalypse may have destroyed a lot of things, Clarke thought to herself as she watched John gather Octavia into an easy hug, but it also created.

 

They’re starting over, for real this time, from the ground up. The children feed Aden slices of fruit as he preens and the adults buzz around them, building houses only an hour away from the wreckage of where they emerged. Languages merge and blur together as a buzz of conversation fills the air, jackets shed under the warm sun and hair blowing in the soft summer wind.

They all watch Octavia with respect and love and reverence and Octavia tells the kids stories about Apollo and Artemis with eyes softer than Clarke ever used to get the privilege of seeing them, maturity and wisdom in all her glory.

Clarke re-meets her mother and bursts into tears immediately, Abby sobbing in her arms, and Octavia watches them which Clarke had expected because no one spends so long with Abby Griffin without being at least partially adopted into her little family. “Oh, my baby,” Abby says, hands framing Clarke’s face, and Clarke knows that there will be apologies and explanations and questions later but for now she just cries. Octavia is a pillar of strength to her left and John and Emori guard them from sight to her right, and her mother is in her arms, and gods, she’s missed this. She has missed her mother.

Emori and John slip through the ranks of people easily, like fish in water, and Clarke doesn’t resent them for it in the least. They may not belong to any one group of people, but she knows they belong to her. Emori chatters with her desert kin and John with Octavia, but at the end of day they find their way to her by the fire, and Emori brushes Clarke’s hair and John tells them stories to make them laugh. They are hers, and she is theirs. (And somewhere deep inside she thinks about her heart will surely break when she meets those who flew into space because if she feels this way about people she saw every few weeks, imagine how close a group would be if they spent every waking moment together for half a decade.)

 

“I’m so pale compared to you,” Octavia moans, running her hands longingly down the sides of Clarke’s face and Clarke laughs. “Clarke, you’re so lovely and _tanned_ , oh my gods.”

Clarke giggles and Emori rolls her eyes and smiles by their sides. Octavia leans back, grinning. “Even more the perfect princess, blonde hair and blue eyes and golden skin,” she teases, and Clarke reaches out a hand to push her away, still smiling.

“Not such a perfect princess,” John pipes up. “Not with those tattoos, she’s not.”

“Tattoos?” Octavia’s jaw has dropped open and Clarke sends John and annoyed glare before winking playfully at Octavia.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teases, and Octavia’s eyes narrow.

Abby walks by their little group just as Octavia is trying to wrestle Clarke’s shirt over her head, John wolf-whistling and Emori cheering them on as Clarke squeals in protest.

 

(“These are so fricking badass, Clarke,” Octavia tells her very seriously, and Clarke almost blushes.

“Thanks, Octavia,” she says instead, pleased, and John snickers unashamedly.)

 

The days pass and Clarke tries not to think about what’s missing but it can’t be ignored. Octavia is more antsy than Clarke is, despite the land she gets to rediscover, and both Indra and Abby watch her with fond, familiar worry. John and Emori wander away from the group for hours at a time, reappearing at night and vanishing before sun-up, and the people Clarke once gave up everything to protect watch her like they don’t believe she’s real.

(The children tell stories of her, so she’s heard. A few years this would have made her sick to her stomach. Now it just makes her unbearably sad.)

Clarke herself feels strangely detached from everything happening around her. She watches as Emori and John drift and her heart weeps with the knowledge she can’t deny, that they will leave her one day and nothing she can do will stop them because they do not belong here and they owe nothing to these people. Emori and John have always been outsiders to everyone but themselves.

(And they are hers and she is theirs but Clarke would never chain their hearts to her. She is not denying their bond, but she knows. Clarke learned years ago that some truths cannot be denied.)

She sees Octavia lead with an easy grace, determined but not hardened, respected but not feared, and meets Octavia’s searching glances with only smiles, careful never to show her muted opinions and desperate to avoid advice or accusations. Octavia is no longer the girl she knew, and neither is she the girl Clarke had imagined she may have become in those long months between their communications, and she isn’t sure what Octavia wants from her.

And as for her mother, well. Clarke is not a little girl anymore, and she’s not a heartbroken teenager and she’s not a leader desperate for validation. She doesn’t need her mother, not anymore, and they both know it. Abby, Clarke knows, will struggle with this concept, is struggling with this concept, no matter how long she’s had to adjust to the notion. It’s okay. Clarke loves her mother and always will. They will learn.

“Do you miss them?” This is Octavia, sitting opposite Clarke and across the fire.

Clarke looks up from the arrow she’s been sharpening, meets Octavia’s steady gaze. “Of course I miss them.” Her voice is soft, free of offence.

“Do you, though?” Octavia averts her gaze suddenly, studiously staring at the fire.

Clarke leans back slightly, her legs folded before her, setting down the arrowhead. “Yes.” Her tone is slightly sharper but not harsh, and Octavia looks up. “Of course I miss them, Octavia. No matter how long it takes them to come down, no matter how long we have to wait, no matter how long ago we lost them—I will always miss them. A part of me will always miss them.”

Octavia says nothing else, her eyes shadowed, and Clarke waits for her to say something further but she never does.

 

It’s been four days since reuniting with the bunker-kru, or _wonkru_ as Octavia hails them, fiercely clinging to the unity they learned in the underworld. Clarke spends more time in the trees, winding through branches higher and higher to the clouds, higher until she can breathe normally again. Solitude has always been a contagion, Clarke thinks, and she’s sure it will simply take some time to adjust. That’s all it is, she reminds herself, and she isn’t going to be a leader and she isn’t going to be an ambassador and she is _just Clarke_ but—well. Already Octavia looks to her subconsciously when she enters her vicinity, and already Abby has asked her to join in the medical department and to teach them about the plants to avoid and to utilise, and already people stop talking when she walks near and lower their heads like they fear her.

Clarke reclines along a tree branch, her back touching the bark of the trunk, her hair braided down her back and her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The irony doesn’t escape her, that the perfect princess from the elite of the ark now lives like one of the grounders they’d all feared so much, that she’s spent more time truly living on the ground than any of the others who’d so easily scorned her, that she’s been living the true ground-dweller way for five years while the grounders had to live like she once had.

It’ll take time, she tells herself, and if she breathes deeply enough she can smell the sea. It’ll settle soon, she tries to believe, and they’ll leave her alone eventually. If she closes her eyes she can imagine the faces of those who she wishes were by her side and if she thinks about something else she won’t hear their voices telling her she’s a fool for trying to trick herself into something that will never happen.

(She will never be granted peace, they hiss. Not here while the reminders of everything she used to be still look at her like she’s got fingers dripping blood.)

It’s been four days since reuniting with _wonkru_ and six days since the earth became declared safe for human inhabitation and Clarke’s eyes fly open as the sound of roaring wind reaches her ears and she leaps to her feet on the branch, one hand stabilising her against the tree trunk, staring in amazement as a rocket, the rocket, comes hurtling towards the ground.

She’s been waiting for this moment for years and years, dreamed of all the ways it could go, but watching the rocket fly to the ground she finds herself standing still, heart pounding furiously as her hair blows in the wind and her feet stay glued to the branch.

She can hear the shouts coming from the camp, knows hundreds of eyes are tracking the rocket’s progress across the sky as hers are, but in this moment somehow everything feels muffled and quiet and there is only Clarke and the tree and the wind and above it all, a rocket tumbles back down to earth.

Clarke doesn’t head back to camp. They’ll know where she is. She clambers towards where the rocket went down, swinging around tree trunks and over branches with an ease she doesn’t have to think about, and her feet don’t hesitate before each step, eyes never looking down as her heartbeat drums in her ears.

There’s smoke rising in the air, she estimates that it’s around a thirty-minute distance from Octavia’s encampment but Clarke can make it in less than that, and the sudden and unexpected fear grips her that maybe something went wrong, maybe they crashed—she’s never even considered that they’d make it down only to die before she could reach them. (She’d imagined that they’d land half way across the world, far from her reach, or that they’d never come down at all but this—this seems too cruel even for what she deserves.) “No,” Clarke murmurs, and drops down onto the ground to run, faster than she has in months, branches stinging her cheeks as she whizzes by them, fear and adrenaline fuelling her steps. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if they’re dead, if any of them are dead. She doesn’t let herself think about it. “No,” Clarke whispers, heart in her throat and heartbeat erratic. “ _No_.”

The trees blur by her and she stumbles, once, twice, uses her hand to push her further and keeps going. Her mind is consumed with one thought, one goal: get to the rocket. Get to the rocket. For once, every doubt and every voice is silent as the silent forest echoes with the sounds of Clarke’s sprinting, care forgotten as she pumps her arms by her sides and then—

A clearing. Always a clearing, somehow. The rocket lies smoking in the centre, bent and burnt trees telling a story of its passage to the ground, silver metal charred and black. Clarke falters to a stop as she skids into the centre, suddenly feeling exposed and afraid. What if—no. Her thin jacket abruptly feels far too thin and she feels defenceless, bare of weapons and without any form of backup. Clarke banishes that brief thought with an inward snarl, _she’s done fine without backup for five years_.

She takes a breath and steels herself, squeezes her hands into fists and forces her feet to move forward, steady as the wind and silent as the woods— a shaky exhale and then sudden calm overtaking her.

The hatch opens.

Bellamy looks everything and nothing like she’d remembered and it feels like rebirth to look at his face.

They’re staring at each other, silent, his mouth parted slightly, and dimly Clarke registers his hair is longer than it ever was before, curls blowing lightly around his face, light stubble covering his cheeks and jawline. He looks good, Clarke thinks. Not as tired as she remembers, not as worn out. Kinder. Softer. It suits him.

“Clarke,” Bellamy croaks out, voice rough.

“Bellamy,” Clarke whispers, and it comes out half-sob, and she doesn’t even think about it, just runs at him and flings her arms around him, Bellamy stumbling back a step and instantly wrapping his arms tightly around her, burying his face in her shoulders as Clarke squeezes her eyes shut.

In this moment, it feels like they’re two puzzle pieces finally joined, and everything is perfect and everything is right and everything is good. Bellamy’s arms are steady and squeezing and strong against her back, and he’s silent as she is as they soak in each other’s presence. The wind is warm and gentle and the sun is shining as though it knows what’s happening on earth, and the jacket under Clarke’s nose smells like Bellamy, only cleaner.

 

Clarke pulls back after a few moments that feel like eternity, so she can see his face, so she can feel his skin under her fingers, so she can see that he is alive and real and here and rakes her eyes over him, lips stretching into a smile wider than she can bear. His freckles have faded, Clarke knows they’ll come back within a month… His hair, gods, what a mess, she can hear Octavia’s teasing now… the jacket he wears is torn and faded but it’s clean of dirt or blood and what a welcome change that is… there are tears in his eyes and he’s looking at her like she’s his sun and stars.

He’s looking at her like she’s a breath of air and he’s choking to death, he looks at her like she’s the light and he’s shrouded in darkness, he looks like at her like he’s drowning and she’s the hand reaching under the water there to pull him out. And his smile is growing slowly, drinking her in, and Clarke laughs.

“I’ve godddamn missed you,” she says.

 

“You have no idea,” Bellamy rasps, and Clarke’s hands are still gripping his shoulders and his fingers reach up to trace the side of her face, something almost like wonder in his eyes, and Clarke suddenly can’t deal with the weight of what he isn’t trying to hide shining in his eyes.

She jerks to the side, sees Raven’s wide eyes and sobs again, a laugh choked up with the tears. “Raven,” she tries to say, and Raven launches herself at Clarke, squeezes her tight and fists her hands in the back of Clarke’s shirt.  

Raven is burying her face into Clarke’s shoulder and Clarke can feel her shirt getting wet but she couldn’t care less, her eyes filling as she squeezes them shut against the emotions that rise, holding Raven tightly. “I thought you died,” Raven says, and her voice is rough and sad and young. “Don’t—don’t do that again.” Clarke exhales shakily and pulls out of Raven’s embrace to thumb away Raven’s tears and try for a smile.

The next moment, Raven is being shoved to the side as Harper reaches Clarke, laughing, and wraps loose arms around Clarke’s middle, eyes bright, and Clarke lets her arms fall lightly onto Harper’s shoulders as Miller crows in joy and clasps her shoulder, pulling her into a rough hug after Harper steps back. She can feel Bellamy’s eyes still on her but as Clarke looks up, smiles wide and unguarded as she looks around the people she’s been missing for five years, her eyes catch on Monty, standing apart from the others, and instantly her heart drops straight to her feet and her smile falters. He’s not walking closer. His eyes are wary and he isn’t smiling and—oh gods. Of course he doesn’t want to see her. Of course. He was—he was angry, last time they saw were together. Of course, he isn’t the little boy who used to brew moonshine for her and have secret handshakes with his best friend. Of course.

Clarke’s throat feels too dry and her legs are itching to run away and Raven’s grin is slipping as she catches sight of Clarke’s face, and then Monty says: “Clarke.”

Clarke plasters a smile on her face, tries not to show any of them what she’s feeling, but she can see Raven looking from her to Monty and back again, confused. “Hey,” she offers, raising a hand weakly in greeting and immediately cursing herself for it. It’s awkward and jilted and fake and _wrong_.

But then Monty’s eyes are filling and he makes a choked-sounding noise and Clarke is so scared of messing this up more and she’s so sad and she _shouldn’t_ but her feet are moving forward of their own accord and her arms lift up to embrace him, pulling Monty to herself. He buries his head in her shoulder, even though he’s so much taller than her now, gods, and she can feel him shaking as his hands clutch at her shirt. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and the words feel like knives.

“Don’t be,” Clarke says, and the viciousness in her voice surprises even her. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Monty.” He pulls away, looks like he wants to say something else, and Clarke cuts him off. “You’re here now. Let the past go.” These last words are said softly and Monty’s eyes fill with tears, pulling her into another hug.

“C’mon. Earth is waiting.” Clarke’s got Monty’s hand in her own, tugging him gently towards the door of the rocket, and her heart is calm and still as they step out into the light, Monty squinting and bringing up his free hand to cover his eyes from the glare of the sun. Clarke lets go of him to step forward and away, Monty’s footsteps slow and filled with wonder as Harper stumbles out behind him, whooping with Miller, and Raven leaves the rocket as fast as her brace allows, grinning so widely that to Clarke she shines brighter than any star. And Bellamy, behind all of them, looks around him with wide eyes and a small smile she hasn’t seen in years, his eyes meeting with hers, and from across the clearing she sees as his eyes melt and his smile grows into something new and kind.

“We’re back, bitches,” Miller laughs, and Harper cheers as Monty’s solemnity falls away and he exchanges his tears for laughter.

“Back again,” Raven agrees, walking up to Clarke and bumping shoulders with her. Bellamy finds his way to his other side, close enough to touch, and Clarke’s heart feels full and empty and lost and satisfied all at once.

 

She leads them back to the camp, footsteps silent and steady on the forest floor as the others stumble ungracefully behind her, and she’s unused to hearing the sounds of people in the forest, even after days of being surrounded by Octavia’s wonkru. The sound of soft exclamations fills the silence of woods empty for five years, and to Clarke’s ears they seem vulnerable and clumsy, and even now she can find the time to wonder at that irony; that she’s more grounder than her people, that she’s more earthborn than wonkru. She has to remind herself to slow down, to bear in mind Raven’s leg, to stick to the path and not slip away into the trees. She has to remind herself that they’re here, and it’s something she never thought she’d have to get used to.

Monty’s fingers trail through the flowers, Miller at his side and talking together, Harper at Miller’s other side and occasionally pointing thigs out to Raven, who’s at Bellamy’s side, face red and sweaty but not unhappy, Bellamy trailing beside her and Clarke, who’s only a bit in front of them.

“Octavia’s people have been building settlements around an hour from Polis,” Clarke murmurs, and then repeats what she said after Monty looks up from his conversation with Miller in confusion. She’ll have to talk louder, too, now. Now that there are people listening, people who can hear her, not just the trees and the breeze. Bellamy sends her a reassuring smile and her brow furrows unconsciously. Why does he think she needs reassurance? The irritation that she feels is unexpected. She’s been missing his presence from her side for so long, missing how they used to be before she made too many mistakes, and the realisation that he’s been a leader for longer than her is uncomfortable, the feeling of independence she’s had to learn over the years not one she’d realised she would have to relinquish.

Clarke shakes her head to bring herself back to reality, away from her thoughts, and looks up to the sky. The sun has barely lowered; they’ve still got time. “Just a couple more hours,” she promises, ad Raven huffs out an exhausted breath before pausing, leaning onto Bellamy and sending Clarke a strange look.

“If the camp—” she blows a strand of hair that’s escaped her ponytail away, “is still a few hours away, Clarke, how did you get to us so quickly?”

Clarke shrugs, ignoring the unease that trickles towards her heart, ignores the voice in her head that says Raven sounds suspicious and can Clarke really blame her? _Yes_ , another voice whispers, and Clarke jolts her shoulders slightly to shake the thoughts away. “I wasn’t at the settlement,” she says, and can sense without looking that while Bellamy falters, Raven presses forward faster. The others have fallen quiet, and Clarke reaches out a hand to brush along a tree trunk, trying to ground herself. She has travelled the world, has stood down armies, has loved and lost and learned, has survived by herself for years, and she should not be feeling so defensive when her friends are curious.

“Why weren’t you there?” Where were you?” Raven’s voice has a frown in it, and Clarke hums under her breath as her calloused fingers skim the surface of tree bark.

“I was in the trees,” she says, voice airy and carefree, looking back only briefly and seeing five expressions of confusion behind her.

“In the trees,” Raven repeats, and Clarke wonders how Bellamy will take all this. She remembers how he felt the last time she lived as a grounder. The thought troubles her.

“Was it the grounders?” Bellamy’s voice, at least, hasn’t changed, still as deep and insistent as it ever was.

Clarke rolls her eyes and snorts gently. “No, Bellamy, I was fine. Just wanted some air, is all. And besides, we were hoping to see you at any moment.” This, at least, cuts off his retort.

“How are the grounders doing?” Raven pipes up again, and Clarke turns to walk backwards as she looks at the older girl—woman, really.

“Wonkru is doing well,” Clarke says, voice light. “With Octavia leading them, they will have no reason to return to the way things were. There is no reason to fight amongst each other, not anymore.”

“Are they all staying in the same area?” This is Harper, curious and slightly wary, though Clarke doesn’t blame her for it.

 Clarke smiles at her. “For now,” she agrees, turning around again and looking behind her to see their rapt faces. “They may split later, some tribes may wish to reclaim old land or visit the ruins of their homes or set off to new places, but for now, Octavia has managed something no one else ever has, no commander or grounder or anyone. She has brought all the clans together, and together they will stay, no matter where they end up living.”

There is silence after that, and Clarke pushes a branch gently out of her path. She’s always careful not to trample plants, break branches or smother flowers. Her companions, she sees, are not. She could not pinpoint where she learnt it or if she ever did; the strecha respected the land as she does, and she has seen the deadlands so she has a new appreciation for the things trying to grow in this harsh world.

“She’s done well, then.” Bellamy’s voice is soft but gruff, proud and awed and, she can tell, uncertain.

“She is still Octavia,” Clarke chooses to say in answer, “just different.”

 

They take a break not long after, letting Raven rest on a log, and while she grumbles and grouches, the blazing anger Clarke expected is no longer there. She lets herself rest, this Raven. She lets Bellamy help her sit and she meets Clarke’s eyes with a smile, not a furious challenge against pity or aid. Five years in space, Clarke supposes, could do that to a person. She doesn’t suspect there is much need to defend usefulness when there are only four other people with you, and each plays a part in keeping the others alive.

Bellamy wanders around the patch of forest they’ve stopped in, silent and contemplative, small smile on his face as birdsong echoes in the air, not as loud as it was once but there none the less. Harper is sitting on the ground beside Monty, leaning her head on his shoulder as he drums his fingers against the soil and Miller (“ _I prefer Nate, now, actually,”)_ muses on who they’ll see first.

“We’ll do it better, this time.” Raven’s face is warier than it used to be, looking at Clarke likes she’s scared she’ll disappear, like she’s watching everything that could go wrong, like she’s remembering what they used to be before five years of separation. “Real friends, not just allies, not just sky people. We’ll do it right.”

Clarke’s feels like if she opens her mouth, her heart will fall out, so she opts for a watery smile, reaching out and squeezing Raven’s hand with her own. _Real friends,_ she whispers much later that night, and the words feel strange and sad and like a new beginning.

 

This time, Clarke pledges, they’ll stick together for something more than duty. They won’t stay together just because they’re _the hundred_. This time, there’ll be something more, they’ll be something more. This time, there has to be—Clarke knows better than any of them how much is out there, all the different paths they could take.

She remembers telling Aden that she could always just run away, even if she never said those words, _run away_ , and she vows to herself that first she will try. She owes it to herself to try.

**Author's Note:**

> part 2 should be up fairly soon! 
> 
> pls review friends :)


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